


One Last Kiss At The End Of The World

by Yahtzee



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 1960s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cults, Dubious Consent, Forced Marriage, Multi, Plot Twist, Prophecy, Siblings, Suicide Attempt, Surprise Pairing, Telepathy, X-Men First Class Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:35:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Raven gets mixed up in a mutant cult, Charles infiltrates the group, pretending to be a true believer in the hopes of getting her out. What surprises him is the charisma and uncanny wisdom of the cult's leader, Elisha Ammon -- the emotional power of this isolated group of mutants working to create a home together -- and his powerful connection to Ammon's right-hand man, Erik Lehnsherr. But Ammon's fear of humanity, and of the future, makes him desperate for control ... and when the bond between Charles and Erik can't be contained, Ammon's reaction proves deadly. </p><p>(The role of Elisha Ammon is being played by the very obliging Imaginary Benedict Cumberbatch.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the Kink Meme prompt found here -- http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/5215.html?thread=5416287. However, I've deviated from the prompt so much that I don't know whether it truly counts as a fill any longer. What remains is the idea of a mutant cult, and Charles' determination to infiltrate it for Raven's sake. 
> 
> Obviously this has some resonance to the real life events of Jonestown, so if you find this triggery, be warned. 
> 
> I'm writing this as I go, so bear with me. 
> 
> **

Charles Xavier had been awake for 24 hours straight. Getting from Westchester to Idlewild had been simple enough, as had his flights to Miami and then to San Juan. But arranging transportation to this remote area had taken considerable time even before it had begun – and had meant hours on bumpy, unpaved roads, with Charles piled unceremoniously in the back of a truck with only his duffel to sit on. The night had seemed to last forever, the air thick with humidity and mosquitos. Weariness had taken some of the intensity from his fear as the hours wore on. Yet the fear always remained – more diffuse now, not a single insistent point in his mind but a fog through which every sound and thought was filtered. When morning came and brought back the blinding heat, he’d poured a bit of his water onto his bandana and tied it around his forehead.

Between that and the exhaustion, he imagined he cut a poor figure here at the gate of Utopia.

That was what it said: Utopia. No irony evident, though the letters were hewn roughly in a plank of wood that ran across a mud road. Everyone who came here was being promised paradise.

The young man and woman who had met him at the gate were slim, attractive, and very polite for people carrying machine guns. “We don’t have accommodations for guests,” said the man, who had introduced himself as Janos. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve come a long way.”

“I’m not a guest,” Charles said. “I’m Raven Darkholme’s brother. Go ahead, ask her, I’m sure she’ll tell you.”

The woman called herself Angel; her dark eyes studied Charles carefully. “We came here to escape the outside world. Sometimes families don’t understand that.”

“But I do.” _Do the blue-eyed innocent British fop thing, do it up, look as fucking adorable and harmless and winsome and castrated as you can. You’re a darling. Cup of tea? Nothing to fear here._ His smile widened. “You see, what Raven said to me – everything she’s been talking about for the past few months – the more I think about it, the more I know she’s right. And I’m ready to leave the outside world too. In fact, I already have.”

Janos and Angel shared glances. Behind him, Charles could hear muttering from the truck. If he didn’t get through the gates soon, his ride would leave without waiting to see what happened to him. He didn’t relish the idea of being stranded in the jungle.

If only this talent he’d begun to develop – his mutation, his telepathy – could help him now! But he was forever struggling to master that ability, and his powers often became shakier when he was under stress. At the moment he felt more stressed than he had at any other point in his life, and so Janos and Angel were unreadable. Unfathomable. He just had to stand there, hoping he’d hit the tricky balance between looking happy to be here and looking sincere. Sweat trickled down the small of his back.

Janos half-turned and lifted his hand. Another figure emerged from a hut farther down the walk. Would this one have a gun too?

“I didn’t bring much,” Charles said, lifting his duffel. “A few changes of clothing. A few pairs of shoes. A book. Does that count as the outside world? I was hoping not. I’m hopeless if I haven’t got anything to read.”

“We do have a reading room, you know.” Angel gave him a contemptuous look, as though the bloody Library of Alexandria might be hidden back amid the banana trees.

Charles just smiled more broadly. “Then you can consider my copy of _The Reivers_ as the latest contribution.”

“Someone wants to join us,” Janos said to the approaching figure. “Raven’s brother. Literally just drove up.”

For the first time, Charles turned his gaze toward the newcomer. He meant to keep smiling, but he couldn’t. Something about this man’s gray, unblinking stare told him he had to be as close to honest as possible, now. This man – tall, muscular in a rangy way, sheer power evident through the sweaty T-shirt and low-slung cargo pants, and with a jaw firm and angular as a cutting edge – this man would see through the lies.

This man gave him reason to be afraid.

“I don’t see any family resemblance,” said Angel. “Do you, Erik?”

“Raven is adopted. She told us that. You haven’t been listening during the gut checks, have you?” Erik’s gray gaze settled on Angel for a moment, and she straightened, one hand perhaps unconsciously seeking the butt of her gun. But his attention returned to Charles soon enough. “You mean to live here. To share our mission?”

_Keep it simple_. “Yes.”

“You never came to any of our meetings in New York.”

“No – I was living in England at the time. But I listened to what Raven told me. More carefully than she realized, I think.”

Erik tilted his head slightly, studying Charles. Three hours until noon, and already the heat made the air shimmer. Everything he’d done for the past week led up to this moment – and he knew he could well fail.

_Maybe they’ll just let me go_ , Charles thought. _Send me packing back to San Juan._ But there was no comfort in that, not really. If he’d understood Raven’s last letter – understood the message he felt sure was written between the lines – then walking away from Utopia wasn’t an option.

He had to rescue his sister or die trying.

Then Erik said, “We’ll take him to Prophet.”

_Prophet._ That meant Elisha Ammon. The leader of the Church of The Transformation. That would be the final test.

Charles shouldered his duffel bag and began following the three of them along the long, muddy road that led toward Utopia, whatever it might be. Behind him, he heard the truck he’d hired start up and drive away. He listened to the sputtering of the motor until it faded from earshot, leaving him behind.

**

The Church of the Transformation had at first seemed like just one more of Raven’s enthusiasms. The fads of adolescence –hula hooping, Tab Hunter – well, those had been cute. However, her later interests had shown her true character – fundraising for the NAACP, volunteering for Kennedy, and the like. Charles had always supported her, though he had always wondered at the sheer intensity of her commitment to each and every cause. Such fiercely unquestioning devotion, even to the best of principles, bordered on unhealthy. However, he’d always thought the worst thing to fear for her was burnout.

A church had at first seemed like a positive step. Both Charles and Raven had drifted away from their parents’ Catholicism, but they’d talked about how they felt the lack of a spiritual component to their lives. Charles had been working on his doctorate at Oxford at the time, or else he would have accompanied her to the services she spoke of. A church that believed in radical social change: It sounded good to him.

Better yet – the Church of the Transformation welcomed mutants. Not tolerated. _Welcomed._

The world was so little ready for them. Charles despaired of it, sometimes, but dreamed of someday using his scientific knowledge to help people understand that mutation was simply the next stage in human evolution – and that the gifts mutants had could be a force for good in the world. Raven’s letters had said that this was Elisha Ammon’s message, too. Charles had smiled to think of a place where mutants and humans worshipped together, recognizing one another’s humanity.

But then the letters had begun to change. It became clear that Ammon’s church did not merely welcome mutants; it catered to them exclusively. In fact, it preached that mutants were better than human beings – superior to them in ways far beyond the physical. The future belonged to mutants; thus, mutants had to be ready to rule.

This went too far. Mutation made people stronger, not _better_. Might did not make right. Charles tried to tell Raven as much, but she wouldn’t listen. Ammon had shown her a path down which her changeable skin was not merely an attribute but a virtue … and a way in which she could gain righteousness through being nothing more than what she’d been born. It was a seductive philosophy, as compelling as it was shallow. All the way across the Atlantic, Charles had no chance of overcoming it.

He still hadn’t been alarmed, though. Worried, yes – but the intensity of Raven’s dedication tended to be inversely proportion to the length at which she held it. Surely this too would pass.

Raven’s praise of Ammon became outright worship. Ammon could heal the sick, she said; as this was apparently the man’s mutation, Charles could accept that much. But in Raven’s telling, this was a sign of divine favor rather than the setting of his chromosomes. She called Ammon “Prophet” now, said that all mutants were to take names that reflected their true selves, and signed her notes “Mystique.” When she began writing about Ammon’s gift of prophecy, Charles became far more concerned. Yes, it was just possible that a mutation might allow people to glimpse shifts in the time-space continuum hidden to most, but was that true in this case? None of the prophecies seemed to be delivered for the hearers’ benefit – only to demonstrate Ammon’s power.

Then she’d written about the plan for a mutants’ community – a Utopia – in which they would live together, hiding nothing, exploring their powers and preparing for the day when they would rule. This was no mere pipe dream, but a scheme under which they gave up their lives, their homes, everything, and moved to a remote area of Puerto Rico in which to build a new world from scratch. Charles had said to hell with letters at that point and begun calling her long-distance from England at every opportunity. Nothing he said made any difference.

“We’re making this world for you, Charles,” Raven had said. “For everyone like you, and everyone like me. Someday you’ll see.”

Charles didn’t see. But by the time he’d been able to return home, Raven was gone – and most of her chunk of the family fortune had been moved to the treasury of the Church of the Transformation. To hell with the money: He wanted his sister back. As frustrated and worried as he’d been, his lawyers had told him there was little to be done. Raven was legally an adult. She could make her own choices.

Then, six days ago, he had received a letter from Utopia, her first in too long.

_I know you’ve been worried about me, but don’t be, Charles. Everything here is amazing – I don’t think I’ve been this happy since it was just you, me and Mom at home in New Salem. We’re building a paradise on earth with our own hands. It’s just like we always said heaven would be: Equal, fair, just and right. We’ll see one another again when the time comes. Until then, take care of yourself and know that I love you._

The letter was signed _Raven_ and then, under it, _Mystique _. It was in her handwriting. But every word of it rang false.__

After Brian Xavier’s death, when it had been just Charles, Raven and Sharon Xavier in the house … that had been the darkest time of their lives. Mum had begun her swift, steep descent into alcoholism. Kurt Marko had wormed his way into their lives, bringing Cain with him. And their grief for their father had loomed longer as the years wore on, only growing stronger as their lives disintegrated without him. Raven would never have described that as a happy time – at least, not if she were speaking freely.

And they’d always said heaven was a place of pure love. It began as a childish prayer they said together – then something corny they would occasionally remind each other of – then finally the most sentimental thing they could say to one another and still wholeheartedly believe. She would never have written him a letter about heaven and not said that.

So when Charles read those words, he knew – Utopia wasn’t what Raven had wanted it to be, and she wasn’t even free to tell him so.

Two hours later, he’d made the first call about booking flights to San Juan.

Charles had never fully understood his sister, but he’d always loved her, and love was more than strong enough to bring him here. He only hoped it was strong enough to take them both back home again.

**

The first words Elisha Ammon spoke were, “You’re also a mutant.”

“Yes. I’m a telepath.”

Ammon paused there at the door of the cabin. The bright light from outside silhouetted him, made his face an unreadable shadow. Charles sat there on a plain wooden bench, elbows on his knees, so tired he thought he might drop.

Utopia was honestly impressive; instead of the few tents or makeshift shelters Charles had expected, he’d seen what looked like a small village – or perhaps the world’s best-organized summer camp. Large community buildings were surrounded on all sides by residential cabins, all of them rough-hewn but apparently sturdy. The mutants who walked around seemed for the most part cheerful and industrious. Charles might have been charmed – even disarmed – had his telepathic powers not picked up on a general sense of unease.

Now that he saw Elisha Ammon for himself, though, he understood why people in his presence found it hard to keep a clear head.

Ammon was not an especially large man – tall and fit, but very slender. He had long hands with elegant, tapering fingers that made Charles think of a musician rather than a preacher; his English accent was more posh than Charles’ own. Impossible to say whether he was a homely man or a handsome one: this sort of long-faced, catlike severity did not personally move Charles, but he suspected others might react very differently. (Charles had a weakness for brawn.) He wore simple clothing, the loose white shirt and khakis appropriate to the heat, and showing signs of wear that suggested he did not enrich himself at the expense of his followers; the only sign of wealth was a thick golden band around his wrist, and that was so dingy and dented that it seemed unlikely to be a recent purchase. Ammon’s pale eyes seemed to take in more than anyone else saw, and his appraising stare simultaneously made Charles yearn for approval and despair of receiving it. Had he met this man under different circumstances, with no reason to distrust him – had heard precisely the words he wanted to hear – it might have been easy to fall under his spell. Even now, Charles’ breaths came shallow and fast.

“A telepath,” Ammon repeated. He took one step further within the cabin and glanced toward the corner, where Erik stood. By now Charles understood that Erik was very senior in the church. “What a fascinating mutation.”  

“My own talents are still developing. But I think I could be of some use.”

_Underestimate yourself. Underestimate what you can do._

Crossing his arms, Ammon leaned against the doorframe. “Still developing?”

“Yes. I’ve been aware of my ability virtually my entire life – but – ” He couldn’t believe he was about to confess this – something Charles had rarely admitted to himself, much less to a man he strongly distrusted – but he had no prepared lie and knew he’d be found out if he relied on anything less substantive than the truth. “Every time I’ve come close to developing my power, I’ve been faced with some kind of trauma. A severe shock. When I was a child, just after Raven came to us, our house caught on fire. When we were adolescents, our father died suddenly. We had an abusive stepfather and stepbrother. Once I was in college, I began to – but then a good friend of mine was killed in an accident.” Charles laughed, though nothing was less funny than his litany of woes; the survival rate of the people close to him was so dismal as to seem like a cosmic joke. “I’m sorry. It gets old to listen to, I’m sure. But emotion clouds my ability, and I’ve never found a calm enough space to truly explore it.”

“You can tell us anything,” Erik said. This was probably church doctrine, a commonplace saying here. And yet it was tempting to think he truly meant it.

Ammon nodded. “How much can you read right now?”

Raven might have told them about his true potential – rarely glimpsed, but real. He couldn’t out-and-out lie. But he could ... underplay. “Right this moment? Very little, I’m afraid. I’m tired – exhausted, really. I haven’t slept in more than a day.” Charles wished that weren’t so close to the truth. He fudged a little more. “Mostly I need to be in contact with people to read more than a few moods.” There. That should be vague enough.

Ammon nodded, taking that in. Then he said, “Erik, take a seat next to Charles.”

Erik did as Ammon asked. The shaft of light that filtered through the nearest window, busy with motes of dust, painted the outline of Erik’s body for a moment – and then he was there on the bench next to Charles. He smelled like rich earth and honest sweat. The stubble along his chin only heightened the intensity of his gray eyes –

_Easy, now,_ Charles told himself. _No point in broadcasting the other way you differ from the norm. You haven’t come here to ogle attractive men. Particularly not attractive men who are currently armed and responsible for holding your sister in the jungle._

“Touch him, Charles,” said Ammon. The words sent a guilty thrill through Charles, for only an instant. He knew what Ammon was really asking.

He lifted his fingers to Erik’s temple; his skin was warm – no, hot, almost as though he had a fever. Their eyes met. Charles closed his eyes and felt …

Anger, unfocused, diffuse, ricocheting off everything and everyone in the world.

Grief, a wound in him almost as old as the man itself and not even begun healing. 

Paranoia, sweeping out in every direction like radar, always on the ready.

And loneliness – so profound that the sorrow clenched around Charles’ own heart.

But he could speak none of that aloud. Absurd to feel so protective of a muscle-bound man with an automatic weapon, but Charles did. No matter: He could answer truthfully without violating Erik’s privacy. Quietly he said, “You hate the idea of your mind being read.”

Erik’s thin lips pressed together. “You’d hardly need telepathy to know that.”

“You’ve long wanted mutants to band together,” Charles said. “Since you were a boy. And in a very real way, you feel as though you owe Elisha Ammon your life. Or … or something even more precious to you than life. You owe him that.”

Charles let his hand drop. A flicker of awareness of Erik’s mind remained, despite his nervousness and exhaustion. Perhaps he’d formed a kind of tie to Erik in that moment – or maybe it was just that he recognized that mind now, and his powers sought it out, as instinctively as searching for home.

“Very interesting.” Ammon clasped his hands behind his back. His white shirt bore not one speck of dirt, not one line of sweat, despite the heat. “I admit, I’ve wanted to meet the famous professor.”

_Careful._ “I’m not currently a professor.”

“You have a doctorate in genetics, don’t you?”

“Raven told you about me. Well, she exaggerates, but I suppose you’ve found that out for yourselves by now.”

“And I know _you_. I know the current and flow of time, Charles. I know the shape of things to be. You are a rock in that stream. You shape the current. You change the flow.” Elisha’s pale blue eyes darted toward Erik. “As does Mr. Lehnsherr here, in his way.”

_Marvelous. He goes around telling us all we’re destined to write the future. I suppose next he’ll be telling me I’m the reincarnation of Buddha or Abraham Lincoln or some such rot._

And yet there was something uncanny about Ammon, something that sent a chill along Charles’ spine, despite the heat.

“Tell me.” Ammon stepped forward, his gaze locking with Charles’. “What do you think Utopia would be?”

“I have to admit – I had no idea you’d have pulled so much together so quickly,” Charles admitted. Best to start with the little bit of honest praise he had.

But Elisha shook his head. “No. Not this place. Utopia in the classical sense, an ultimate ideal. What would that be, for you?”

“For myself it would be a library, good records, better wine, a chess set and pleasant company.” Charles was surprised to see a smile flicker briefly on Erik’s face, before it settled back into stone.

Elisha didn’t seem amused. “And for mutantkind? What is our utopia?”

“I wouldn’t presume to answer that. Every man ought to be free to define his own heaven.”

“Or to make his own hell?” Erik said.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Erik opened his mouth again, as if to begin a debate, and Charles found himself invigorated at the idea of this conversation – but Ammon stepped between them, and Erik did not speak.

“I think we can show you a better path to heaven, Charles,” Ammon said. “We’re all on that path together. I mean to lead the way.”

Something came through Charles’ powers then, muted but unmistakable: The sheer visceral strength of Elisha Ammon’s conviction, which went beyond admirable to being eerie. Yet it was not mere manipulation. This man believed in his cause, absolutely. He believed in Utopia.

Then Ammon smiled gently, and once again Charles felt some of the man’s charismatic pull. “Come along. You’re obviously tired, and you must be eager to see Raven.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Relief swept through Charles so strongly then that it dizzied him – or was that the long hours without sleep talking? He swayed slightly on his feet; Erik’s hand caught him, briefly, at the elbow. Ammon’s eyes flickered down to that touch, but his smile never dimmed.

“We’ll take care of you, Charles.” Ammon put his arm around Charles’ shoulder as he shepherded him from the hut; Charles kept his hand firmly around the handle of his duffel. “We’ll get you a place to sleep – needs must, now, but by tonight we’ll have everything settled. You’ll meet your new friends. Who knows? You might even meet a wife.”

Charles would have objected to that, had the brilliant light outside not blinded him for one instant – and had the first sight his squinting eyes took in not been a figure in blue dashing toward him.

No. A figure of blue.

“Raven!” He ran forward and scooped her up in his arms. She embraced him tightly, and people around them clapped and cheered. Charles opened his eyes to see it; most of the crowd, even Ammon, seemed genuinely pleased by the reunion. But Erik merely stood still and watched, grey eyes unfathomable.

“Oh, Charles,” Raven sobbed against his shoulder. “You didn’t say you were coming.”

“Wanted to surprise you,” he said, knowing she would understand that he meant surprise them.

But she shook her head, answering no to a question she hadn’t been asked. Her voice a whisper so low he could barely hear it, she said, “Why did you come?” He managed to keep a smile on his face for the others, even as she added, “Now he has us both, and he won’t let go.  He’ll never, ever let go.” 


	2. Chapter 2

They assigned him to a “household” – one of the huts where people lived communally. Charles’ hut was also occupied by two couples and one single man, a friendly guy named Armando Munoz. “You even have your own room, see?” Armando laughed as he pulled back the thin hanging cloths that marked off one small pallet in the corner. “Hooks on the wall for your stuff, but you won’t need much, you’ll see.”

“Spacious,” Charles said, and immediately wished he hadn’t – it hit exactly the wrong tone. The four married people all drew themselves up – for all their jungle garb, mutations and bohemian beliefs, they were as offended as Southern Baptists watching a miniskirted girl do the frug.

But Armando shrugged.

“Hey, look at it this way. The married folks have to use that space for two. You and me, right now, we’re the only ones in this outfit who can spread out. Gotta enjoy bachelor life while we can, right?”

The joke smoothed over the moment well enough; beneath it, though, Charles sensed Armando’s concern – his genuine need to protect someone from what he thought could be serious repercussions. Even the slightest sign of discontent was frowned upon here, apparently. Perhaps even punished. And they were miles and miles away from the nearest town. How in the world was he going to get Raven out of this?

“We divide the household chores between us,” said one of the women. “You can start on laundry duty. We’re right by the stream; you’ll find the supplies down there.”

 _I am using my genetics degree to separate whites and colors._ “That sounds great.”  

“First thing in the morning is best,” Armando said. “Not so damn hot. And that leaves you free for prayer services and construction duty the rest of the day.”

The residents of Utopia didn’t get much time to themselves. They were worked hard, so that they were tired at night. They were housed in groups with scant privacy, which meant little chance to delve into anyone’s personal discontent. Every element of it would feel honest, communal, Christian in the earliest and perhaps best sense … and yet all of it was designed to create an atmosphere of near-total control.

Invisible bars always made the best cage.

 

**

 

They let him take it easy, the rest of that first day; despite his exhaustion, he only half-slept that night, sweating on his pallet, not sure of the faint stirring of the clothes around him was his dream or merely a breeze. Everything felt far-away and unreal.

Reality arrived just after dawn the next morning, when Charles clambered down the ladder of their raised hut to the area beneath, with a bag of laundry on his back. It was a simple equation: hard, sweaty work all day plus relatively few garments per person plus no guarantee that clothing would dry in a single afternoon during the rainy season equaled a need for nearly daily washing. Granted, he’d never washed clothing in a river, on his knees, before now – but how hard could it be?

It turned out to be very, very hard.

Charles swore as he scraped his knuckles yet again against the washboard. Armando’s shirt didn’t seem to be getting any less soiled, either, for all the scrubbing he’d already done. His hands were raw and red. Was this lye soap?

A quiet voice said, “Hello.”

Startled, Charles glanced over to the next hut – or, rather, beneath it, where Erik Lehnsherr knelt with his own bag of laundry. Apparently they’d drawn the same chore. “Oh. Hi. How are you?”

“Another fine morning in Utopia,” Erik said, his voice so blank that he might have been sarcastic or utterly sincere. Charles wasn’t going to risk finding out. “You seem to be settling in.” 

“It’s a big transition.” With Erik, perhaps, he could at least ask this. “When will I get to see Raven again?”

Erik’s grey eyes sought his, even as his hands continued the business of soaping a pair of jeans. “We’re discouraged from – prioritizing the connections than came before our time with the church.”

“Of course,” Charles said, though his frustration was mounting. How was he supposed to get his sister out of here? How had he crossed thousands of miles to get to her only to find her still out of reach? And had the others made a point of grinding their clothes in mud specifically to spite him?

“Here. Watch me.” Erik began working, his movements defter than Charles’. Of course, he’d had more practice. But just seeing how Erik held things, the steps he took, helped Charles realize a little of where he’d gone wrong. He began again, still slow and clumsy, but better than before. Once he’d hit a groove, Erik said, “You’re getting the hang of it.”

“Here’s hoping.” When Charles glanced back, he saw that Erik had stood to begin hanging the first few garments from the line stretched beneath the stilts of the hut. The broad blades of Erik’s shoulders moved beneath his white T-shirt like wings. To distract himself from that thought – and everywhere it led – Charles asked a risky question: “Who did you give up?”

“Give up?”

“When you came here. What connections did you let go of?” 

Erik was quiet for so long that Charles thought he’d made a fatal misstep – but then Erik said, “No one. I had no one.”

“… surely not,” Charles said, but that flicker of connection he’d forged with Erik yesterday shone brighter for a moment, telling him Erik’s words were true. 

One more pair of jeans was draped on the line, and then Erik turned back toward Charles. His expression was closed-off, guarded – yet not angry – as he held out one arm. There were the tattooed numbers Charles had somehow failed to see yesterday, though they were a code key to the man – the legend to his map. Through the fragile connection between their minds crackled the remembrance of pain. “Do you know what this is?”

“Yes. I’m so horribly sorry." 

“You didn’t do it.”

“Saying sorry isn’t always an apology. Sometimes it’s the only way we have to say that we hate what happened to you. That we would undo it if we had the power. We regret that we don’t. Sorry can mean that, too.”

“I realize that. I just – ” Some of the careful blankness left Erik’s gaze; he blinked, as though he needed to focus on Charles anew. “I was speaking reactively. Not honestly. Don’t mind me." 

“I didn’t mean to lecture, either.”

“Sometimes, I think, you like to lecture.” Erik looked almost sly, and Charles realized that this was probably as close as the man ever came to joking. “But not today. Not now. I understood you.”

“Good. And I’m glad – now that you’re here – I’m glad you’re no longer alone.” Utopia offered its mutant citizens that much, at least.

Best not to go on and ruin the moment. Charles turned back to his washing and devoted his entire focus to replicating Erik’s techniques. Beside him, he could hear Erik splashing and sloshing as he completed his own chore. But the silence between them was as significant as words could have been.

The cracking of knees told Charles that Erik had risen and was done. Should he glance up? Yes. Stupid not to acknowledge that, not to say goodbye. He looked up and smiled … and felt the falseness of it melt into real pleasure as he saw the way Erik was looking at him.

“The sexes sit at different tables for meals,” Erik said. “But you can at least see Raven there. And after group prayer in the afternoon, we have about a half hour before household meetings when people mill around, chit-chat, that kind of thing. Look for her then.”

“Thank you,” Charles said again.

Erik simply shouldered the empty laundry bag and went inside.

 

**

 

Charles expected his day to be regimented, and it was. He expected life within Utopia to prioritize the group and minimize the individual, and it did.

What he did not expect was how beautiful – no, how _joyful_ it would be.

Breakfast was the first time in his life he’d been surrounded by other mutants; yes, he’d met a couple here or there over the years, and Raven had always been there, but to look around the covered area where they took their meals – to see _hundreds_ of other mutants sitting at the various long wood tables, all of them proudly green or whiskered or miniature or giant or whatever they were – it was awe-inspiring. Even Raven, whatever inner turmoil lurked within her, walked around blue and proud. When someone asked him his mutation, and he said it was telepathy, for the first time in Charles’s life, the response was not only belief but also delight.  

No one had ever welcomed the potential of his mind before. No one. Not even Raven.  

Then Charles was assigned to a team working to clear a field for future planting. Already Utopia grew a fair amount of its own crops; when a rugged young man named Alex Summers told him that they expected to be self-sustaining within the year, Charles believed it. The work was physically grueling – particularly for someone who’d spent the last couple of years doing nothing more strenuous than hauling down hefty genetics tomes from high library shelves – but none of the laborers were mistreated. They all worked hard, willingly. Everyone maintained as good cheer as could be expected given the heat. When people broke for water and cigarettes every couple of hours, the camaraderie felt real.

At lunchtime, they were joined by the children – mostly daughters and sons of church members, but there were also a few mutant kids who’d been abandoned or cast out. That was all too familiar a fate for their kind. Even with his wounded, inconsistent powers, Charles could feel the happiness bubbling up from them … the assurance that they were loved just as they were. Just the thought of mutant children feeling so confident and safe brought a lump to his throat.

“This is what it’s all about,” Armando murmured as they sat together, watching the kids laugh as one of them stretched her rubbery, feeler-like fingers across the table to steal another’s snack cake. “Seeing them like that. If it could’ve been one-tenth as good for us – ”

“Yes,” Charles said quietly.

The children weren’t the only ones sheltered at Utopia. In the afternoon, Charles was startled to realize a couple of the houses were devoted to the elderly – mutants so aged that they could hardly care for themselves. They were nursed with a tenderness and dedication few old folks’ homes in the States could match. He watched as one old man, with bent back and scaly skin, was patiently helped down the stairs to the river by a young woman whose smile never faded, and whose care for him was utterly pure. Some of those older mutants had lived their entire lifetimes always being treated as freaks and outcasts, never once being accepted; now, finally, they had friendship and love, and the gratitude shone from them so brightly that Charles felt himself almost blinded.

This was what was possible if mutants banded together, lived together, worked together. They could be a community in the fullest sense of the word. They could create a way of life more beautiful than anything else that had gone before. No wonder so many of the citizens of Utopia felt that they truly lived in a heaven on earth, and felt pride in what they had built. 

And yet Charles’s powers told him there was more to the story. His powers, and Raven’s oddly worded letter, and the strange way no one ever expressed even momentary discontent.

Utopia was a fruit shining bright and ripe on the branch, but rotten within. Elisha Ammon knew it. But what had gone wrong, and why?

 

**

 

“Group prayers,” which Charles had imagined to be a rather sedate affair not unlike the Catholic masses he remembered from childhood, turned out to be anything but.

“Do you know that you are loved?” cried Elisha Ammon, over the jangling of the guitars and piano, over the makeshift drumbeat of people pounding on the tables. “Do you feel God’s love for you?”

“ _Yes_!” Everyone shouted it, Charles included. He told himself it was mostly to cover his own ass, but with such sheer ecstatic glee rippling around him, through him, the response rose up cheerful and strong. Psychic power sometimes meant not knowing whether emotions were even your own …

A shaft of sunlight filtering in from the slats of the roof glowed through the edges of Ammon’s thin white shirt, shot his dark hair through with reddish light. His eyes were alight, as though this was the answer to his prayers more than anyone else’s. “Do you know that you are made in the image of God? With your wings and your claws you are his miracles!”

“ _Yes_!”

“The day will come when all the world will acknowledge your glory! When the world will look past war and long for love. When the world will turn from the sins of humanity and recognize another way to God. And we must show them that way!”

“ _Yes_!”

People were on their feet, jumping, leaping, and above all dancing. The young woman he had met the first day, Angel, rose up on glittering dragonfly wings to hover above the crowd; those few others who could fly joined her, to more cheers and applause. Charles clapped in time to the music, his eyes searching for Raven; she was a ribbon of blue in the far corner as she danced with a man who had red skin and a tail. If her delight was feigned, her act was good enough to fool even her brother.

Then, almost without consciously choosing to do so, Charles found himself looking for Erik. He was one of the group sitting very close to Ammon. Although he did not dance or cheer, did not even smile, his fist thumped onto the table with the drumbeat. His eyes never left Ammon for a second.

 _Is he a true believer? Or does he see what I’ve sensed here?_ Charles couldn’t be sure – but Erik had told him how to circumvent the rules earlier today. It seemed a hopeful sign.

Ammon cried out, “Call me by my name!”

As one, the crowd shouted, “ _Prophet_!”

Then Ammon began moving through the crowd, putting his hands on a few people’s heads, choosing apparently at random. Each time he did so, the crowd shouted out a name – the name each of them had taken at Utopia. The young man with red skin who stayed so close to Raven was Azazel. Angel turned out to be Tempest. Alex Summers was Havok, and Armando – rather oddly for a religious group, Charles thought – was dubbed Darwin.

Ammon went to Erik and laid his hands gently on either side of his face; the touch was almost a caress. When Erik’s grey eyes looked up at Ammon as though there was no one else in the world, Charles felt a strange quiver in his gut that was almost like jealousy. “ _Magneto_!” the group cried.  Such a hard name for him: That fit, and yet it didn’t.

When Ammon reached Charles, he paused and said, “Our new brother needs a name!” Everyone clapped and cheered madly. Charles tried to look enthused. Ammon leaned closer and laid his hands on Charles’ head; immediately, Charles was hit with a wave of emotion that almost overpowered him. Ammon … feared him and honored him and wanted him to be a part of this so badly that it was a struggle for both men not to weep. How could Ammon care so much, so deeply, for a man he’d only just met? And why? What part could fear play in this? Charles couldn’t tell. All he knew was that Ammon was no faker. For him this was utterly real.

Ammon cried, “Here he is known by his true self. Here he is called Professor X!”

“ _Professor X_!”

Oh, damn it, Charles _liked_ that. A lot.

Afterward, the general mood was giddy to the point of ridiculousness. _We’re drunk,_ Charles thought. _Drunk on each other’s happiness._ But he was able to focus well enough to find Raven. 

“Hi,” he said, glancing around to see if they were being observed; so far as he could tell, nobody was paying them any particular mind as they wove their way toward the outskirts of the central clearing. Mutants of every stripe (literally) milled around them, and the air was thick with laughter. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Definitely.” Raven blinked. “I know I was weird yesterday.”

Charles felt she was being weirder today, but he reminded himself: Whatever strange mindset ruled Utopia, Raven had subscribed to it for almost two years now. She would have to rediscover herself; he could help, but he couldn't do that for her. “I came down here as quickly as I could, after I got your letter,” he said.

That was enough. She flushed darker blue. “I was being silly. Did it scare you? It must have.”

“Why did you write a letter that you knew wasn’t totally true?” 

Raven hesitated. Soon people would heading back to their cabins for daily household meetings, which meant they didn’t have long. But she kept staring down at their feet, Charles’ muddy trainers and her own battered sandals, on the dirt path. Finally she said, “Sometimes I can’t bring myself to believe it. That there’s a place in the world mutants have created for themselves. That’s all.”

“Then why couldn’t you tell me so?”

She bit her lower lip. “I know it has to seem crazy, but, Charles – we make this world, you know? Not just with our hard work, but with our thoughts. With our faith. So we try not to admit our doubts. Doubts just tear us apart.” Then Raven smiled, a turn of emotions so fast as to be eerie. “But hey, I got you here, right? And you have to admit, it’s amazing.”

“It is,” Charles said. That was true. But his unease only deepened. “Yesterday you said – ” He glanced around to make sure they weren’t being eavesdropped upon; pray God nobody close had a mutation for super-sharp hearing. “You said Ammon would never let us go. Like we weren’t free to leave.”

The word _leave_ made her blanch almost baby-blue. “I don’t want to leave. Not really. Sometimes I – sometimes everyone gets tired, you know? But that’s weakness talking. We all have weak moments." 

Charles decided not to respond to this with words. He just kept his gaze fixed on Raven’s, not letting her evade him.

Raven sighed. “I worry about you, though. The rest of us built up to this. We knew what we were getting into before we came down here, at least mostly. You have to commit to this, Charles. You have to be a part of us forever and ever. Otherwise – ” Her golden eyes flickered, the way they sometimes did when she couldn’t decide what face to take, what person to be. “But you will, won’t you?”

“I’ll never leave you,” Charles said. They embraced tightly, as though they had resolved something. Maybe she even believed they had.

How was he supposed to get Raven out of a place she wasn’t even sure she wanted to leave?

But her very uncertainty – the extent to which her mind had been unsteadied – made him even more certain he had to try.

 

**

 

The daily household meeting turned out to be a half-hour when everyone in the house sat around and criticized each other’s work – in a more or less friendly manner, but it was obvious that no one was allowed to shirk their duty in any respect, on any day. Charles’ general ineptitude with the laundry was pointed out, though nobody seemed to expect much more than that from him at first. He was heartily grateful that Erik had given him a few tips, or else the results would have been even worse.

When they got to Armando, though, the mood turned tougher. “The floors are a mess,” one of the guys said. “You just swept. Didn’t mop. And the corners are untouched.”

 _We’re in a hut on stilts. Why do you want to eat off the floors?_ Charles thought but didn’t say.

“I’m sorry,” Armando said. “My shoulder – it’s still bugging me. I thought it might be better by this afternoon, but it’s just getting worse.”

“There’s no shirking here – ” someone else said, but Charles cut in.

“He’s genuinely hurting.” His telepathy told that much of the story; the pain that jabbed through Armando’s shoulder echoed within Charles’ own. “He ought to see a doctor. Do we have one here?”

The pause that followed was profoundly awkward. Too late Charles realized that people were loath to admit anything was wrong within Utopia – even something as simple as an injury. Armando himself wanted to downplay the pain he felt. And in a place led by a spiritual healer –

“I mean, he should see Elisha,” Charles hastily said. “Can’t Armando be healed?”

If anything, the mood in the room only became stranger. One of the guys said, “Healing is difficult for Elisha. Calling upon his power taxes him deeply. We don’t trouble him with insignificant things.”

“But there is a doctor here,” said the older of the two women, a little hastily. Charles realized that she genuinely wanted to help Armando, but it had taken her a moment to figure out how she could do so without admitting any flaws in Utopia’s worldview. Now she could suggest the doctor as a way of making things easier for Elisha; that made it okay. “Well, he was a medical student when he left school to join us. Of course we don’t have much need for traditional medicine, and he works in the fields like the rest of us, but sometimes he’ll patch up the kids’ cuts and scrapes.”

“It makes Hank feel useful,” sniffed the other woman.

“Then I can take Armando to Hank,” said Charles, as he rose to his feet. “Before dinner, I think. The better to ensure a happier tomorrow.”

Nobody argued, mostly so they wouldn’t have to extend the conversation. Charles helped Armando down the last wobbly steps and let him lead the way toward Hank’s cabin.

Hank turned out to be a young man with lively blue eyes, a razor-sharp mind and an enormous quantity of brilliant blue fur. “A secondary mutation,” he said ruefully when he caught Charles admiring his pelt. “Dormant until recently. Elisha’s healing brought it out – a side effect of his power none of us saw coming.”

“Fascinating,” Charles said. “To think of how much lies encoded within the genome, still waiting to come to life.”

“I’ve wanted to research that – and in this community, virtually everyone could take part, but Elisha says we have more important things to do.” Hank’s fuzzy brow furrowed, and Charles realized he’d finally seen someone within Utopia openly express frustration. Was Hank McCoy a kindred spirit? 

Armando cleared his throat. “Uh, hey, can I put my arm down now?”

“Oh yes! Forgive me. Whatever was I thinking?” Hank helped Armando ease his shoulder into a more comfortable position. “Acromioclavicular joint sprain – only first-degree, I believe, but you’ll need to rest it. If you keep overworking that shoulder, the sprain can become chronic, and that gets nasty.” Armando hesitated – obviously weighing the difficulties of taking time off from even household duties – before Hank added, “I shall speak to Elisha about it personally. Perhaps you can be reassigned to teach in the school for a few weeks.”

“I can sweep up,” Charles volunteered. “Take care of your chores around the cabin.”

“Thanks.” Armando smiled – then winced.

Hank briskly went for a pill bottle. “I want you to take two of these now, and two more in about six hours. You should be lying down, too, and I’d rather you were in the first-aid shelter -- you’ll rest better with some quiet. They’ll knock you for a bit of a loop, so tomorrow it’s back to aspirin, but for tonight these are best.”

“So I finally find out what it takes to get the good drugs around here,” Armando said. “About time.”

Together Charles and Hank walked Armando to the small first aid hut at the center of Utopia and got him settled. Only when they were leaving did Charles say, “Got a cigarette?”

“Sorry, no. I tend to believe the scientific literature suggesting tobacco is a carcinogen. I’m surprised you haven’t come across it – though I suppose that line of research is rather far removed from genetics – ”

“I don’t smoke either, actually.” Charles now felt rather stupid. “Just – wanted to talk.”  _Wonderful. Now Hank’s going to think I was hitting on him._

But Hank understood the truth behind everything that wasn’t being said; Charles realized that immediately. He, too, must have been craving honest conversation. “Come on. Let’s walk by the river.”

In the warm glow of sunset, Utopia looked even more idyllic. The river that formed their northernmost border gleamed golden as it wound alongside the whitewashed huts. The broad leaves of palm trees shone with an almost metallic glitter in the final rays of the day’s light. With everyone still absorbed in cabin meetings before dinner, Hank and Charles were essentially wandering the rock-lined paths on their own.

They walked upstream, away from the cabins, the better to maintain their privacy.

Charles began, “Why wouldn’t Armando admit he was hurt?”

“You already know why, I think.” Hank sighed heavily. “We came here for a common goal. For a common good, and I still believe in that more than I’ve ever believed in anything. Elisha was the one who showed us what was possible for mutantkind. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”

“… but …”

“But Utopia has changed. Elisha has changed.”

“Tell me how.”

As he stared at the gentle flow of the river, Hank said, “It’s hard for me to explain. Harder to understand. But it’s as though – as though when Elisha began, he wanted to help us. Then he wanted to lead us. Now he wants to control us. Disagreements, lack of faith, even small problems like the one Armando had – a year ago, we would have discussed all of that freely. Nobody talks freely anymore, and I can’t be precise about when or how it changed. But it has.”

Charles weighed this against what little he’d been able to glean of Elisha Ammon’s character; certainly the part about control rang true. “Why does he want more control?”

“Fear, I think. Fear of humanity’s hatred for mutantkind.” When Hank shook his head and smiled, Charles glimpsed the man within the blue furry beast; before this moment, he hadn’t realized how young Hank truly was. “Do you know, I never worried much about humans before I found the Church of the Transformation? Now it keeps me awake at night, wondering how they’ll treat the children, or what they might do to us.”

“The same things they do to one another,” Charles said. “The same things we might do to ourselves, or them, if we choose to mirror their prejudice rather than overcome it.”

Hank blinked. Obviously nobody had offered a counterpoint to Elisha Ammon’s dogma in a very long time.

If he had an advantage, it was time to press it. Charles said, “Have you ever considered leaving? Going back to the world outside?”

“That’s difficult for me now,” Hank said. The breeze ruffled his dark blue fur.

“I should imagine so.”

“Still, though – yes. I’ve thought about it.”

“I came here to find out what was going on,” Charles said, “and if necessary, to take Raven back home with me when the time comes to leave. Would you want to come with us?” 

Hank hardly seemed to breathe for a long moment, and Charles wondered if he’d gone too far. Fear rose up within him, blocking his abilities once more, so that there was no telling how Hank would respond.

Finally, Hank whispered, “I would.”

“Okay.” Charles kept his voice low and even. “Okay, we’ll start working on that. Who else might want to come with us? I thought, perhaps, Armando – ”

After a few moments, Hank nodded. “Armando, certainly. Possibly Alex Summers and Angel Salvadore. There are a couple of others – but I have to think.”

“I’ll try to sound people out myself. Not with questions,” Charles added, tapping his temple so that Hank would understand. The one name he most wanted to ask about seemed stuck in his throat, like forbidden laughter, all the more necessary for being denied. When he thought he could at least speak normally, he said, “And Erik? Magneto?”

“Erik Lehnsherr? He’ll never leave Utopia.”

Disappointment sank down on Charles’ shoulders, furrowed his brow. “Are you certain?” 

“Absolutely. You can’t mention this to him – I mean it.” Hank grew insistent. “Swear to me you’re not going to do that. If you do, it’s all over.”

And what did that mean, _all over_? For the moment, Charles decided to chalk that ominous phrase up to Hank’s paranoia. “Why are you so sure about him? Is he such a true believer? I have to say, he didn’t strike me as the type.”

Hank shook his head. “I doubt he’s a true believer in God – and he’s almost said as much to me. But he’s a true believer in Elisha. Erik’s loyalty to him is absolute. Unquestioning. He’s Elisha’s right hand here, in every way. Ask anybody in this place: We all know that if we go against Elisha, it’s Erik we’ll have to answer to in the end.”

Why should it hurt so? Charles didn’t want to ask himself that question more deeply, didn’t want to know the answer.

And yet he couldn’t deny the pain as Hank added, “If we want to leave Utopia – Erik’s the one we’ll have to fight.” 


	3. Chapter 3

Charles hardly noticed the heaviness of the laundry bundle in his arms as he made his way down to the river the next morning. All he thought of was seeing Erik again – of trying to learn whether what Hank had said of him could possibly be true.

Erik appeared only moments later, and he glanced over his shoulder while he was still descending the ladder … looking for Charles, maybe, as eagerly as he’d been looked for in return. Stupid to think that, stupider to hope it, and yet Charles hoped. “They haven’t fired you, I see,” Erik said. 

“No. My general ineptitude has been noticed, but if they took me away from this chore, they’d just be turning me loose on something else. And another person would have to do this. I get the sense this is the least-favorite household task.”

“You catch on fast.” Erik knelt by the riverside. His pale white T-shirt reflected brightly on the rippling water.

As Charles got to work in turn, he wondered how to open the conversation he wanted to have. The most obvious route had the potential to also be the most explosive; furthermore, it was possibly insensitive.

Yet he felt he already understood that Erik valued honesty. The same questions that might be too much for anyone else, Erik might bear for the sake of getting to the truth.

Charles hoped so, anyway. “Ah, Erik? I was wondering if I could ask you something. If it’s none of my business, tell me so straight off.” 

Erik barely paused in his scrubbing. “I’d tell you if it were none of your business, regardless. But you’ve given me fair warning. Now ask away.”

“Aren’t you Jewish?” This was punctuated with a nod, which Charles knew would be understood as a gesture toward the concentration-camp tattoo on his arm. 

“They didn’t only go after the Jews, you know,” Erik said.

“I know.”

“But yes. I am Jewish.”

“Then – well – why are you part of a Christian cult?”

“The Church of the Transformation draws from Christianity, but we believe that essential truths are expressed in many faiths. There are many paths.” It was less as though Erik were saying that, more as though he were reciting it – reading it from a prepared brochure. But he relaxed slightly as he glanced back toward Charles. “But you really want to know why I’m here. What brought me to Ammon, to Utopia. Don’t you?”

Charles nodded. 

Erik’s gaze only intensified. “There was a man in the camps – he went by the name Schmidt then, but his real name was Sebastian Shaw. He worked with the Nazis, conducting medical experiments of the most brutal kind. When he realized I was a mutant, you can imagine what he … no. You can’t imagine it. I’m glad of that.”

Charles closed his eyes against a wave of sorrow so vast it subsumed him. But it was no part of his telepathy – just his own sorrow for what Erik had endured. “I’m sorry.”  

If Erik had heard him, he gave no sign. “My only goal in life was to find Schmidt and make him pay for what he had done. I found him, but – he was hard to kill. Schmidt was a mutant, like us, you see. But one poisoned by human ideas of supremacy. His mutation captured and rebounded any energy he came into contact with, so when I struck him, he gained the power of the blow. When I tried to electrocute him, he could throw lightning. The despair I felt – I can’t describe it.”

What a mutation! Was there no limit to what evolution could do? And yet Charles felt the sickening nature of the irony that would give such power to a man who abused it so viciously. 

“When I thought all hope was lost,” Erik said, “at the moment when I thought I would rather die trying to kill Schmidt than live in a world that had him in it – that was when Elisha Ammon found me.”

That was odd, Charles thought. Most people would say that they found a religious leader who spoke to them … not that the leader found them.

But Erik meant it literally. “I was in a dive bar in Argentina, hunting down Nazi scum that might have led me to Schmidt, or might not.”

“Argentina?”

“Elisha has led a – varied life. He’s done more for mutants than you realize. Done more for me. It was as if … as if he already understood me completely. Elisha’s power is healing, but that means he also understands how people can and cannot heal. He knew how to kill Schmidt.”

“What? You mean he told you how to – ”

“Elisha told me nothing. He did it himself, while I watched. It was simple, so simple I could kick myself for not figuring it out on my own. I was able to lure Schmidt into coming after me. We got him into an airtight chamber and let him suffocate, very slowly. There was a glass window. I watched.” Erik’s smile was a fearsome thing. “Does it sound sadistic? Maybe it was. All I know is, in that moment, I swore my loyalty to Elisha Ammon for as long as I lived.”

 _Oh, my friend,_ Charles thought. _I cannot begrudge you your loyalty. But it means I cannot save you._

_Already I would give so much to save you._

“Is that disturbing to you? How Schmidt died?” Erik’s gaze swept over Charles, regarding him as coldly as he feared he would be regarded in return.

Charles would never have condoned such an action against anyone who had harmed him – no, not even his stepfather – but he wasn’t the one who’d been harmed here, which meant he wasn’t the one who got to judge. “It’s no more disturbing than anything Schmidt did himself.”

“Do you think I am a murderer?” Erik spoke evenly, but through their lingering connection, Charles could sense that he cared about the answer. “Do you despise me for my part in it?”

Charles spoke the only truth he could. “I’m glad Schmidt is dead. I’m glad you got some measure of justice.”

“Justice.” Erik shrugged. “There’s no justice for my parents. For so many others. I deserved it less than most. Why did it come to me? The injustice of justice.”

“If you think that way, you’ll drive yourself mad. Justice is like love. You can’t always predict it. Can’t make sure it goes where it’s most needed. You can only welcome it as it comes." 

Erik’s gaze flickered toward Charles. “Interesting analogy.”

Maybe this would be a good time to concentrate on the laundry.

 

**

 

Once Charles was again working in the fields, muscles aching from the unaccustomed physical labor, he began sounding out others – the ones Hank thought more likely to listen.

“I thought it was weird, you showing up here cold,” Alex said as he plunged his shovel into the earth again. “Most of us took a while to commit to Utopia, even though we’d been in the Church of the Transformation for months or years beforehand.”

Had he said too much? “I really did want to see what it’s all about – do want to see – ”

“Relax.” Alex continued to work without saying a word for so long that Charles assumed the subject was dropped. Then, more than a full minute later, Alex said, “I made a commitment to this place.”

“I realize that.”

“But – I thought this place was also committed to us. That it was _for_ us. And it feels like it’s not.” Alex’s voice cracked, which seemed to startle him as much as it did Charles. While he cleared his throat, Charles did him the courtesy of glancing away, allowing Alex to regain his composure. “I’m not just going to walk off and leave everybody else behind. But if we could get more people out – and then, maybe, Elisha would see what’s going wrong here. It might wake him up out of, of, whatever weird dreams have taken him over. Maybe he’d go back to being the Prophet we remember. Maybe Utopia could be what it should be. If we just make him _see_.”

“Maybe it can,” Charles said. For all he knew, it could. Even after so short a stay, he knew that there were real virtues to this place, that good work had been done here. Elisha would have to take stock in the light of a mass defection, and in the resulting upheaval, strong, sane voices – like Erik’s – might be heard and heeded. It was wonderful to think that the goodness of Utopia might be salvaged yet.

How realistic was that, though? Charles knew he couldn’t yet tell. He’d have to do his best for Raven, and Hank, and Alex, and anyone else they could find who might come along.

And Erik’s story this morning had taught Charles that there was a great deal more to Elisha Ammon than anyone else had yet discovered.

Alex lifted one hand in a wave. “We’ve got company.”

Charles glanced up to see Angel coming toward them. Her wings were tucked within her shirt again; why bother, in a place where mutations were welcomed? Sometime he ought to ask her – but other questions were more important. To Alex he murmured, “Should we talk to Angel, too?”

After a few moments, Alex nodded. “Let me try with her first, okay? She’s tough to get to know. Before Elisha found her, she’d – well, she’d been through a lot.”

Elisha found her. Another one who had not been seeking, but who had been sought out: What did it mean?

He had no chance to ponder the question, however, because Angel was looking for him. “Elisha would like to talk with you,” she said. “If you have time.”

“If Elisha’s all right with me leaving the fields, then trust me, I can put down this shovel without regret.” Charles did his winsome English-fop grin again, though his mind was now working a hundred miles a minute. Had Elisha already guessed what Charles was up to?

Worse – could Erik have been the one who told him?

 

**

 

When he reached Elisha’s cabin, however, he was greeted with a smile and a glass of icewater. “You’re rather red,” Elisha said. “You must need to cool down.”

“More sunburned than anything else. English skin evolved to deal with about four or five sunny days a year, maximum. By rights I should never be in a climate where it isn’t constantly raining. How you’ve kept from broiling, I can’t imagine. Or is that the healing power?” Despite his wariness, Charles accepted the icewater with real gratitude. Dear God, he’d never been so hot for so long without a moment’s break.

Elisha’s cabin was private – his own, the only living space in Utopia that was not communal – and yet that was apparently the one luxury Elisha allowed himself. Well, that and an actual bed, wide enough for two.  Otherwise his accommodations were as rustic as anyone else’s, with thin gauze cloth hung over the windows in lieu of glass, and only a few garments hung on wall hooks. Across the one room were a small table and two chairs, rickety cane furniture that seemed to have been put here only because it was unfit for general use. They took their seats there.

“The healing power helps, it’s true.” Elisha leaned forward on the table. His sleeves were rolled to mid-bicep, revealing wiry muscles, and Charles revised upward his estimate of Elisha’s strength. “But nothing beats a sunhat. I’ll talk to someone who works in Goods and Stores, see if we can get you one.”

“Thank you.” Charles said no more, merely waited. This meeting wasn’t about his sunburn. 

But it didn’t appear to be about the conversations he’d had with Hank and Alex, either. Elisha’s eyes searched his face – and they were interesting eyes, almond-shaped, fair but of no one color. It was as though they were somehow hazel, green and blue all at once; at first Charles thought they were changeable, some sort of secondary mutation, but then he realized they were simply very hard to read. “I said before that I’d long wanted to meet you. So I’m glad we have a chance to speak.”

“Raven must have told you quite a lot. I hope she didn’t exaggerate.”

This was meant to draw out precisely what Raven had and hadn’t said about him; it didn’t work. Elisha continued studying him intently. “You believe as we do – that mutants are the future of humanity.”

“Of course. We are the next evolutionary stage.”

“Yet you do not see that humans will attempt to fight their own extinction.”

“I don’t expect them to delight in it. But they have to be brought to the point where they can think of us as .. the next step. Not humanity’s end, but its future. We have much to offer humanity, much that we can build together, and only together. Even though this next step in evolution appears to be happening very quickly as such things go, that still means we’re likely to coexist for the next several centuries. Better if we coexist happily, don’t you think? But if we pit ourselves against them – give them reasons to hate and distrust mutants – then we will surely have reason to fear.”

This seemed to catch Elisha off-guard for some reason. He laughed softly, attempting to cover his own discomfiture. “Cause and effect. Hmm. Food for thought.”

Pressing his advantage, Charles added, “They are not separate from us, any more than our other evolutionary ancestors. We are all shades in one spectrum, rungs on one ladder. Perhaps we are mightier than they, or will be when we have greater numbers, but we are not _better_.”

“Many of the few who know about us oppose us. Mindlessly. Angrily.”

“Which is both saddening and unsurprising. But it is not a reason to oppose them mindlessly and angrily in return.”

Elisha steepled his long-fingered hands together. The afternoon sunlight glinted on the heavy, intricate bracelet he wore around one wrist. His dark hair curled in the oppressively humid air; their skin glistened with sweat. Slowly Elisha said, “You speak like a pacifist.”

“I am someone who cherishes peace, but not a pacifist.” Charles thought perhaps he saw a way to make a conversational segue, one that might tell him a great deal. “For instance, I oppose U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, but I would certainly have enlisted to fight the Nazis in World War II had I been of age.”

That gave Elisha an easy opening to talk about Schmidt, the Nazi he had murdered to give Erik Lehnsherr justice. But the invitation went unanswered – and the lack of any reaction from Elisha whatsoever convinced Charles that Erik had remained silent. It felt better than it should to know that Erik would keep their conversations private.

Elisha said, “You care deeply for mutantkind. For our future as a race, and for so many of us as individuals.”

“… yes. I do.”

“I think you would never be content with a self-centered life – even the modest sort most men create for themselves, with homes and families and jobs they like well enough, if they’re lucky. I think your only happiness would come from being with other mutants. Working for us. Studying our gifts. Bringing us together.”

Something shuddered deep within Charles – the disarming, moving, rare experience of being completely understood. His voice was hoarse when he answered, “That’s true.”

“Have you yet decided how you would shape that life for yourself?”

Charles shook his head. “It’s been so recent that – that we were known widely in the world – that I even realized there were enough of us that we might need defense and protection. So I don’t yet have a plan. But I want to do something. I mean to.”

“Now you have.” Elisha smiled gently and closed his fingers around one of Charles’ wrists. The bracelet brushed against his skin, oddly warm – but then, the heat surrounded them both, bound them together. For a moment Charles found it hard to breathe; his telepathy was telling him nothing about Elisha, nothing at all, and he wondered whether this was intended as a seduction in more than one sense. “Charles Xavier – Professor X – you came to Utopia. I think you came here only to be with your sister, which is a noble reason, but not enough. Only your love for your fellow mutants can make you stay. And I think that love is what defines you. Am I right?”

“…I hope you are.”

“Good.” Elisha’s fingers brushed along the inside of Charles’s arm, as though taking his pulse. Those mysterious eyes searched Charles’s, and crinkled slightly at the corners, an unseen smile, as if he liked what he found. “We could so easily be at odds, you and I. When two people feel so passionately about their goals, they can become – single-minded. Brook no opposition. Even from someone whose goal is essentially the same. I’ve seen it happen. But I don’t want it to happen to us. Let me hear what you have to say. Let me know your concerns. Let’s work together to make Utopia all it should be, to keep mutants safe, strong and proud.” 

It was an arrow thwacking into the very center of the bullseye: the one thing Elisha Ammon could ever have said that could persuade Charles. The words seemed to hover unspoken – the confession about his real agenda, the uncertainty about what to do, even the joy Charles had felt here – he wanted to tell Elisha that as badly as he’d ever wanted to say anything.

Yet he remembered Raven’s fear – and Hank’s, and Alex’s – and it was just enough to keep Charles silent. Just enough.

After the quietness between them had stretched out a few seconds too long, Elisha released his hand and stood. The odd, awkward energy within him made Charles wonder whether Elisha felt even more confused about the past few moments than he did. “I won’t keep you.”

It took Charles a minute to realize he’d been dismissed. “Okay. Thanks.”

Though he wasn’t sure what he was thanking Elisha Ammon for. 

He walked halfway back to the fields before realizing that there was no point, that it would be time to come in for group prayers before he could do more than pick up a shovel again. Charles simply halted in his tracks and stared back at Utopia – at this distance, as idyllic a place as could be imagined.

He had to struggle not to cry.

So much of what Elisha had said – so much of it – resonated with him as deeply as anything he’d heard in his life. Only Erik Lehnsherr had moved him more on such short acquaintance, and Erik – Charles couldn’t even think about what he felt about Erik right now.

Yes, he wanted to live for others. He wanted to work for a better world for his people – for all people. Elisha Ammon even made him want to work for Utopia. If he hadn’t already known that something was deeply wrong here, Charles knew, he could never have resisted the lure. Even now, it was a struggle.

Before he’d imagined escaping from Utopia as a relief. Charles still intended to get out and bring Raven and the others with him, were it at all possible. But now he knew it would cut him deeply to leave this place behind.

 

**

 

The nighttime service before bed had previously been a fairly sedate affair. Quieter hymns, stories for the children, holding of hands, hugs: That kind of thing. But that night it was different.

First Charles realized the children weren’t in attendance. When he dared to whisper the question, Armando shrugged. “They’re in bed.” There was a curious light in Armando’s eyes, which matched the peculiar energy Charles could sense in the room. Anticipation – but it was a furtive emotion, an uncertain one. 

Wasn’t it unsafe to leave the children alone? But then, they were safer here than most places, Charles thought, safer even than human children. No strangers would come anywhere close to this isolated jungle, and among them were people who could smell a single spark from half a mile away, long before it became a fire – or hear a whimper before anyone thought to scream.

And before long, he understood why the children weren’t there.

Wine flowed freely. It was cheap stuff, closer to Thunderbird than Montrachet – but at this point Charles could not have cared less; he’d never needed a drink worse in his life. They poured into plastic cups, Dixie cups, tin mugs, every vessel they’d been able to find – filled them to the rim, refilled them, and again. The records were non-religious, which wasn’t unusual; often at breakfast or lunch there were cheery pop songs or some classical music instead of hymns. But now it was all Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, Etta James, Marvin Gaye. Soulful stuff.

 _Sexy stuff,_ Charles thought, as he saw Erik on the fringes of the crowd, his lips dark with the wine. 

“The world at large would be glad if no more mutants were ever born,” Elisha said. His voice was dreamy, now; he’d had as much to drink as anyone else. “But we shall be fruitful. We shall multiply.”

There was applause – but softer than usual, like the laughter that followed it. Charles’s head was swimming, and he wondered if something had been in his cups besides wine. But he didn’t stop drinking. He felt – safe as houses –

“How fortunate we are to have one another.” Elisha’s voice poured over them like honey. Illuminated the room like candlelight. It suffused Charles, made him smile despite himself. “To love each other. To cherish each other.”

Charles lifted his head from the wine and saw that most of the married couples were already making out. Oh. _Oh._ Well, he hoped this wouldn’t remain public – especially since he could see Raven in the back, curled around her red-skinned lover, mouth upon mouth, in a way that he really would rather not have ever seen his little sister.

Elisha began moving around the room, as though blessing the couples. Sometimes he would nudge people toward each other – always a male and a female – as if giving his consent to some unspoken attraction. But then he reached Erik, who sat slightly apart from the rest. Elisha’s hands reached out to cradle either side of Erik’s face – their eyes met - 

\--and in that moment Charles knew, absolutely, something he’d hardly suspected before: Elisha and Erik were lovers. Or had been … because they did not kiss now, and Erik did not even return the touch, and Charles did not think the taboo against homosexuality had anything to do with their reticence; surely in this place, in this hour, Elisha could get away with anything. Maybe it was over between them? But Elisha had taken Erik to bed, had touched him, had done all the things Charles dreamed of doing. Erik was Elisha’s, soul and body.

 _Don’t think about it_ , Charles told himself. As though that were even possible. He felt as though he’d just fallen down – disoriented, hurting, the wind knocked out of him.

Elisha walked almost directly from Erik to Charles. His hand grasped Charles’s elbow to guide him along. “You should be one of us in every way, Charles.” 

“I’m trying to be,” Charles said. It didn’t even feel like a lie.

“You should be happy.” Elisha’s hand combed through Charles’s unruly hair. “You will be happy.”

Then Elisha reached out and raised someone else from the crowd: Angel, who seemed even more dazed than Charles felt.

“I unite you,” Elisha said, laying Angel’s hand atop Charles’s, then folding both his hands around theirs. “I marry you.”

Charles looked at Angel for a long moment, then turned to Elisha. “Wait, what?”

“Tonight my cabin is yours. I shall rest here. Know one another. Love one another. Tomorrow, Angel, you can take your place in Charles’s cabin as his wife in the eyes of God.” 

What just happened? Nobody else seemed to think it was unusual. A few of the men even looked at him with envy – for Angel’s beauty, perhaps, or simply for being given a designated lover. Charles sought Erik in the crowd, but Erik wasn’t looking at him … had in fact deliberately turned his face away.

He could of course refuse. Just say no, that he didn’t know Angel well enough, that Angel didn’t know him – it was only reasonable. Even the wine-warmed crowds around him would recognize that on some level. Maybe a moment of public defiance was the thing that would wake some people up –

But Charles already knew there was a dark side to Elisha Ammon. That dark side awakened when his will was thwarted. If he publicly defied Elisha now, he’d never get Raven and the others out; he’d never have the chance.

Elisha knew it. He _knew_ it. He wasn’t a telepath – Charles would have sensed that – so how could that perfect understanding, that assurance in his own trap, shine from him so brightly? This was too big for Charles to defy so soon. He was stuck. Just – stuck.

“Come on,” Angel whispered, tugging at his hand. He might have thought her eager for him, if she hadn’t been shaking. “He wants us to go.”

They spoke not one word to each other until they were again within Elisha’s cabin. Charles locked the door – meaningless as that was, with no glass in the windows – and turned to Angel. “Does he mean it?”

“That’s how marriages work here.” Angel sat on Elisha’s bed, curled her legs into her chest until she was huddled in a little ball. She was younger than he’d realized, scarcely out of her teens. “Elisha knows who should have children – who will have children, he says. He puts them together. Then you’re married, and you get to work having mutant babies.”

“Dear God.” Charles figured none of this was legally binding, but that was hardly his main concern. “You needn’t be worried. I’m not going to – hurt you, touch you, anything like that.”

Angel’s head snapped up; her eyes were blank with panic. “But Elisha willed it!”

“Angel – you’re beautiful, utterly beautiful, and under other circumstances – but you see, I – I have problems with girls.” Which was about the only way he could put it. Charles wasn’t wholly without sexual feeling for women, but it wasn’t the ready, heated passion he so easily felt for men. The few women he’d desired had all been ones he knew well and cared for deeply as friends before anything physical had ever awakened between them. Angel was someone he hardly knew.

And right now his heart, his body, only wanted one person – a person he could never have – 

“You have to get past it,” she said. “You have to.”

“But you can’t – you don’t – you hardly know me!” 

“You don’t know what my life was like before Elisha found me. It’s okay.” Again that turn of phrase – but it was forgotten in the images that filtered into his mind as his telepathy shuttered open for a brief moment. Angel stripping for men in a seedy club – going with them to back rooms – most of them older and less appealing than Charles – and her willingness to send her mind away while they used her body: She had come to expect more than that from life, to hope for it. Tonight’s events were a crushing return to a time when she had been valued for sex alone.

This only strengthened Charles’s resolve. “Really, Angel, it’s all right. We’ll be … friends. We can work together – ”

“You don’t get it.” Her voice broke; her trembling had begun again, more violent than before, so much that Charles began to be frightened for her. “Elisha will know. He means for us to make a baby. We have to try. If we don’t – then we’ve opposed him. I did that once when I got here, and I don’t ever want to do it again, not ever – ”

“He’s not a telepath. We can tell him we did.”

“God damn, are you stupid.” Angel’s anger only masked her fear for a moment. “Why do you think he put us in his bed?”

Holy hell. It was going to come down to Elisha Ammon checking the sheets for stains.

There were still ways around that. But Charles had begun to realize that Angel would be petrified with fear unless he – unless they –

 _Just do this_ , he told himself as he watched her trembling. _At this point it’s an act of kindness. Make her feel safe, convince Elisha that he’s brought you into the fold – just once, probably, she doesn’t want you any more than you want her._

There was another reason he hesitated: Erik. But Erik was not his; Erik was Elisha’s. 

“Okay,” Charles said. “Okay. If you’re sure. We’ll get through this. Together. All right?”

“All right.”

Angel began doffing her clothes; after a moment, Charles followed suit.  He sat naked on the edge of the bed by the time she wrestled with the bindings beneath her shirt. Then she lifted that away, and Charles hardly noticed her breasts – not with her wondrous dragonfly wings unfurling behind her, shimmering in the dusky room.

“They’re beautiful,” he whispered.

She shrugged. “You don’t have to seduce me, you know.” He had a feeling she’d said that before.

Charles took her hands. “I just think this would be easier if – if we could be kind to one another.”

It soothed her more than anything else he could have said. Angel nodded, then leaned her head against his shoulder. Charles embraced her, and for a long quiet time they simply held each other, skin to skin – acknowledging their mutual fear, the trap that had closed around them both.

Angel whispered, “When I came here I thought no one would ever just see me as a body again. For Elisha to do it – _Elisha_ – ”

“I know. It’s wrong. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve got to get out of here.”

Charles touched her cheek. “I will get you out of here. I promise you that.”

He didn’t think she believed him; Angel wasn’t someone who gave her trust quickly, at least not any longer. But he’d come through for her. For Raven. For all of them.

When she finally kissed his mouth, Charles kissed her back. They were awkward with each other at first, and Charles wondered whether he’d even be able to physically answer. But he tried to please her, to do that much if he could.

Then as she straddled him on the bed, he saw her beautiful wings stretching out on either side, and whispered, “Why do you hide them?”

Angel looked surprised. “I don’t.”

“But you keep them tucked away. Bound.”

“Protected. They’re sensitive.” One corner of her mouth curled upward. “It’s kind of like wearing a bra. You know?”

“No, not really.” They both laughed, the small joke leavening the moment. Charles drew one finger along the edge of her wing and was rewarded with a gasp. He was onto something there. If only he could feel something besides curiosity. 

But the satiny feeling of her wing against his skin reminded him, oddly, of Erik – of that time he’d watched Erik hanging up clothes, had seen his shoulder blades working beneath his T-shirt, and they had reminded him of wings – 

“There we go,” Angel said. She dipped her hips lower, ground against his rapidly hardening cock.  “That’s right.”

“Come here.” Charles didn’t intend to waste the moment. His hands gripped her at the waist, and she did the rest.

Then she was riding him, quick and hard, just the way guaranteed to get a man off as fast as possible. Charles closed his eyes and gave into it. Afterward, Charles worked her with his mouth, stroking her wings the whole time, until he’d brought her off in return.

“That was nice,” Angel murmured once they lay on opposite sides of the bed, beginning to drowse. “A lot of guys wouldn’t have done that.”

He thought but did not say, _It seemed the polite thing to do under the circumstances._ Then Charles considered it for a moment. “It wasn’t too – you didn’t mind?”

“I’d have pushed you away if I minded.” Her hand stole across her belly as her dark eyes met his. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope to God we didn’t start a baby.”

“Me too.” Charles didn’t even know how he would handle that. This, too, was one of Elisha’s traps. How many people within Utopia would have left but for “spouses” they had to care for, or children on the way they had never wanted or planned? “Does he – does Elisha get angry if you don’t, ah, succeed?” 

“Not for a while. I mean, it can take a while.” Angel stared up at the ceiling. “So if you don’t want to – as long as we can tell him we have and he knows it’s true – we’ve got a while, is what I’m saying.”

“Elisha won’t check?”

“He usually doesn’t.”

“Okay.”

 _How did we get into this?_ Charles thought. The bizarre turn of the night had plowed through his plans and expectations like a freight train. Now he had someone else he was responsible for – and yet he also had another ally. Another connection he could perhaps trust in this strange place. Maybe there was a way to turn even Elisha’s strangest machinations against him.

Angel squeezed his hand once, then rolled away from him and went to sleep.

 

**

 

The next morning was spectacularly awkward by any measure. Elisha and a small group of his followers – a section of the inner circle, Charles could by now tell – greeted them in the morning with “breakfast in bed,” which would have been more welcome if they’d been clothed, if breakfast hadn’t been the exact same melon and muesli they could expect at the communal tables, and if it hadn’t been the crack of dawn.

Above all Charles hated the jovial, overly intimate glee Elisha took in the whole thing.

“I sensed you two could share a powerful connection,” he said, putting his hands on each of their heads. Angel gathered the sheet tightly around her, even crumpling one of her sensitive wings. “I’m pleased to have been proved right – but not as pleased as you two, I guess.” 

What possible reaction besides anger could Charles have that Elisha might remotely believe? He went with an emotion he genuinely felt: protectiveness. “Please. Angel and I – we’d rather have some privacy.”

“Again already!” someone said. The laughter was good natured, and yet forced. People wanted them to be happy … but only because they dreaded the alternative. 

Elisha stepped back. “Have your breakfast. Then, Angel, go to your former cabin. You are free of your duties there as of now. Pack your things and join Charles in your new home. As for you, Charles – we’ll have to see whether your housemates decide to give you the morning off!”

More false, hollow laughter – but at least they were leaving. 

As soon as they were alone, Angel gave him a look. “Well, shit.”

“My sentiments exactly. But we’ll figure something out. Listen – I want to go on to my cabin, all right?”

She shrugged. Already she was far more at ease; though her terror of Elisha had not abated, they had at least managed to build some trust last night. “Sure. You trying to get out of chores? I’d say we deserve it after last night.” 

“No, actually, I want to get started on the laundry.”

So within twenty minutes of waking up on what was technically the day after his wedding, Charles was again hauling dirty clothes to the riverbed. Nobody else in his cabin had even awakened yet. Just as well. He wanted to take his time with this – as long as it took –

\--but he didn’t have to wait. Already Erik was there.

“Oh,” Erik said, clearly startled. “I hadn’t thought to see you today.”

“Surprises seem to be happening all around.” Charles took his place a few feet from Erik; the rosy morning light was still relatively gentle as they sat in the shade of their huts. “Certainly I wasn’t expecting that last night.”

“Angel’s a lovely woman.” Erik’s voice was as stiff and artificial as anyone else’s had been that morning; however, he wasn’t smiling or pretending good cheer. It was as though he had to struggle merely to be polite. “You’re very fortunate.”

Charles wondered how honest he could be. “She and I don’t know one another very well yet.”

“After last night? I’d say you know each other better.”

The feeling surged through that connection they had, cementing through telepathy what Charles had already suspected through plain common sense: Erik was jealous.

One day ago, that realization might have made Charles irrational with joy. Now, though, it was only one more layer of the conundrum surrounding him. If Erik was beloved of Elisha, then why was – wait –

It came to Charles then. This was not an insight that came through his powers, nor a rational deduction; no, this was pure intuition, and yet he was surer of it than almost anything else he’d learned since arriving at Utopia. Elisha had married Charles and Angel for no other reason than keeping Charles and Erik apart.

“This isn’t what she would have chosen,” Charles said quietly. “Or me, either.”

Erik hesitated, his powerful frame still beside the water. When he glanced over his shoulder, the raw pain in his gaze – no, not his gaze, that was still so shuttered and guarded, but in Erik’s bruised spirit laid bare to Charles’ power – was devastating.

But Erik said only, “Elisha’s will.”

Charles knew then that Erik understood Elisha’s motivations as well as Charles did himself.

Why do all this only to keep him and Erik apart?  If Elisha and Erik were lovers – Erik was sworn to him, absolutely, in a way Charles knew his own modest charms could never overcome. This couldn’t be purely romantic meddling. Something else underlay Elisha’s dark purpose – something Charles couldn’t yet guess.

But he was a telepath, however weak or wounded his abilities might be. He had the power to read minds. His trepidation at fully exploring his power – it was natural, perhaps, but Charles could indulge it no longer. He needed his telepathy now more than ever. His life – and Raven’s, and Angel’s, and Erik’s, and so many others – might depend on reading the unfathomable mind of Elisha Ammon. 


	4. Chapter 4

It would have been easier on them both if Charles could have just done the laundry in silence, but he couldn’t; already, talking with Erik was a habit. More than a habit – a touchstone. One way he kept himself sane amid Utopia.

“If you feel that it’s so important – our having children – ” Charles’ voice sounded too loud, but it was just the morning hush playing tricks on him, that and the way Erik stopped moving at the sound of his voice. “Why hasn’t Elisha chosen someone for you?”

“I’ve wondered that.” Erik slapped a wet T-shirt against his washboard and began scrubbing at it so hard it seemed likely to tear. “I’ve asked him. He says I’ve done my part.”

“You mean – you have children?” There was a psychic echo of reaction to that, a second wave of shock within Charles as he realized it was true.

“I married very young, after the war. We had a daughter. But my wife and child died long ago.”

He said it matter-of-factly, as evenly as he had described his survival in the Holocaust – and with nearly as much echoing pain. Charles could see that little girl for a moment, only a fleeting image in her father’s mind, and yet at the center of so much of his turmoil and anger … and also his love and joy, though that was buried even deeper down.

Erik kept speaking, though it was obvious he didn’t want to. But even less did he want Charles to say anything, to hear words of kindness that might threaten his composure. “Whatever Elisha wills, I’ll do. As long as he lives. This isn’t something he’s willed for me. The next generation of mutants, the ones who’ll stand against the humans – maybe I’m meant to guide them, or lead them, rather than contribute to their numbers.”

Charles went with the change of subject; this was a conversation he’d wanted to have with Erik, anyway. “Do you really think it will come to that? Humans versus mutants?”

“Do you really think it won’t?”

“I don’t think genocide is inevitable, no.”

“Then you haven’t seen enough of the world.”

That prickled at Charles’ temper, still raw after his strange “wedding night” with Angel mere hours before. “I’m not a child, Erik. I see into people’s hearts. Do you think I’ve seen nothing but sweetness and light?”

At that Erik paused in his labors, but only for a moment. “Then you know what humans really are.” 

“And what mutants really are. Yes, we’ve evolved better strength, better talents, better wings and claws. We’ve yet to evolve better hearts.”

“It never occurred to me to hope for that.” 

“What’s the point in hoping for anything else?”

That made Erik laugh – but in surprise, not contempt. When he glanced over his shoulder back at Charles, his exasperation was obvious … but so was his affection, and that tore at the few remnants of self-control Charles had left. “You love a good argument, don’t you, Charles?”

“I think I enjoy arguing with you more than I enjoy agreeing with anyone else.”

And that was the step too far – the thing he shouldn’t have said, the thing that couldn’t be unsaid. For one instant, Erik’s expression was so open to him – his soul so open – that Charles could have poured his mind within Erik’s, could have walked to him and taken him in his arms, and none of it could have been too intimate. None of it could have been unwelcome.

Then the door between them slammed, a psychic closing-off as powerful as it was mutual.

“We should work,” Erik said.

“Yes.” Charles bent down to start on the laundry, and they worked side by side in silence.

The next morning, someone else from Erik’s hut had taken laundry duty. Charles had expected it.

 

**

 

Soon afterward, the summer rains began. At first Charles welcomed the break from the heat – but that was only relative, as the temperatures were only slightly less steamy. In return the dirt roads became pure mud, chores became harder, tempers became shorter and, most critically, it was harder for Charles to have the conversations he needed to determine who wanted to leave Utopia, and when, and how.

The day or two he’d hoped to spend gathering more potential escapees together turned into a week. Then a week and a half, and still they had no solid plans together. He hadn’t even gotten another moment’s privacy with Raven, who was looking distracted these days.

Frustrating as this was, Charles used the time as best he could. He had little privacy any longer, since he shared his small corner of the cabin, including the sleeping pallet, with Angel – whom everyone now referred to as his wife. To his surprise, though, she was fast becoming both a friend and one of his main allies.

“Mmmmm,” she said late one night, kicking her feet so that their sheet would rustle. “That’s nice.”

Charles, lying next to her, tried hard not to laugh. “Oh, yeah,” he moaned, thumping his hand against the pallet.

Angel mouthed, _What was that supposed to be?_ He shrugged. Faking sex was harder than he would have thought.

She turned her face into the pillow, doing her best to make her stifled giggles sound like fast, high-pitched breathing. At this point she slept shirtless – it was the one time each day she could be sure her wings could breathe – but she still had on her underwear, as did Charles. This was more about practicality than modesty, at this point; their situation didn’t allow the latter and demanded the former.

What else could he do? Oh, to hell with it. Charles just went ahead and humped the pallet for a couple of minutes, while Angel stuffed her fist into her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

They did this every night or two. Previously, Charles had been embarrassed by the relative lack of privacy in the cabin – but more on the married couples’ behalf than his own. Now he realized that they were meant to keep tabs on each other … to tacitly report if some couple didn’t seem to be fully committed to creating more mutant children as soon as possible. Nobody appeared to actually peek through the sheets that served as walls, thank goodness. Eavesdropping was the norm. Since Charles did the laundry, all he and Angel needed to create the illusion of a happy sex life was a few minutes of sound effects in the evening.

Afterward, they practiced his telepathy.

Angel’s forehead furrowed as she tried to somehow think loudly. _Maybe you should talk to Armando._

_I agree. Armando’s seen the other side of things here. He’s so easygoing that I didn’t pick up on his discontent at first – but it’s there._

She lit up with a smile and mouthed, _You heard me! And I heard you!_

Charles nodded. It wasn’t as though this represented a huge leap forward for him – talking with someone who was concentrating on him, someone so close her feet touched his own. That much he’d occasionally managed before – it was just about the easiest thing to do. But he hoped to forge a stronger link with Angel, the better to extend his own psychic reach through her. To his surprise, she had been game to try this; the uneasiness most people felt about telepathy was foreign to her. Angel’s only comment about it had been, “Thank God you’re the telepath, and not Elisha.”

As they tried to sleep later that night – warm breeze stirring the sheets around them, Angel’s lean back and shimmery wings alongside him – Charles asked himself whether what she’d said was true. Was he the only telepath here? Could Elisha have a secret power – beyond healing, beyond prophecy – that gave him such control over the others?

Yet as undeveloped as his telepathy was, Charles felt certain that he would have sensed the presence of another mind-reader. More than that, if Elisha were controlling the people in Utopia, then they would all react to him – obey him – in highly similar ways. Instead, each individual seemed to have been snared in his or her own trap. Each person had a unique reason for following Elisha Ammon, and for fearing him.

Maybe this place was a puzzle he’d never work out. Maybe he’d have to leave with those few he could bring with him, and never understand the truth of Utopia.

That meant never understanding Erik, either.

Charles knew that shouldn’t have been the hardest part to bear, and yet –

He sighed and turned over on his pallet, and fell asleep to the sound of Angel’s breathing.

 

**

 

Rain poured down the next day, making laundry impossible. Charles rinsed out what things he could in a bucket; there was no need to do this beneath the hut, but he did anyway, hoping that Erik might appear, that he might have taken back laundry duty – but he hoped in vain.

The morning was cheerful in only one respect: Angel had awoken with severe menstrual cramps. He’d made much of babying her, which she genuinely seemed to appreciate, but Charles knew that beneath the surface they were both delighted. Their one night of sex hadn’t resulted in a pregnancy; Elisha Ammon’s will had been thwarted.

In a communal hut, nobody had any secrets. As Charles and Armando walked toward the meal area during a period of lighter rain, Armando said, “Looks like Project Baby Mutant isn’t quite off the ground yet, huh?”

“Not quite.” Charles decided to seize the moment. “Honestly, it’s a relief. Angel and I – we’re still getting to know one another. I’m still working Utopia out. I’m not ready to bring a child into this.”

Armando kept looking resolutely forward, but through his powers – awakening, slowly, unfolding day by day – Charles sensed a certain eagerness. If he were going to put words to the feeling he’d detected within Armando, it would be _Yes, finally, someone said this place isn’t perfect!_

Charles glanced around to make certain they weren’t being overheard. With mutation-enhanced hearing, anything was possible – but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them. The only people in the immediate vicinity were a crew working on shoring up one of the huts under construction; the mud had done the foundation no favors. With a pang he saw that Erik was among the workers, not even glancing his way. His white T-shirt plastered to his body by sweat and rain –

Well, he had other things to think about at the moment. “Your shoulder’s all better?” Charles said, keeping the conversation light; the main thing was to keep it going.

“Mostly. Twinges once in a while.” Armando hesitated, then added, “Still, you know how it is here. You’ve gotta suck it up and go. No matter what.”

“They push hard.” The leap. “Too hard.”

“Yeah.” At last Armando glanced over at him. Uncertain as he was, he clearly was willing to take the risk. “Bet you wish you hadn’t hurried down here so fast, huh?”

“There are always return flights.”

“Job of work, getting on one.”

“Yes. But – if I were going – if a few of us went – ”

Armando squared his shoulders. “Talk to me.”

But at that moment, Charles felt fear arc through him, sharp as a sword; the fear wasn’t his own. He turned and cried, “Erik!”

\--as the hut collapsed, with Erik inside. 

Charles wasn’t even aware of beginning to run, or deciding to. All he knew was that his feet were pounding through the mud, slipping and sliding, but he kept himself upright, determine to reach Erik as soon as possible. Behind him, he could hear the splashes that told him Armando was on his heels.

People were swearing, cursing, carrying on – but in a community of mutants, no one was helpless. “Stand back!” Alex shouted as he pulled off his shirt; a bolt of energy blasted forward, atomizing most of the logs that had fallen on Erik. Hank began tossing the rest aside with his inhuman strength.

Armando said, “Is he alive?”

“Yes.” Charles could still feel Erik burning in his mind like a candle – but a candle melted almost to wax, with a flame that sputtered and dimmed. “For God’s sake, hurry.”

Hank pushed aside the last logs to reveal Erik lying there. Heedless of the small crowd watching, of what anyone might think, Charles scrambled through the debris to clutch at Erik’s hand. Surely his injuries couldn’t be that severe – 

\--but Charles’ heart sank as he saw that the thick puddle beneath Erik’s head was not water but blood. One of the logs had struck him in the temple, hard, probably fracturing the skull. Erik’s pain pounded through Charles with every heartbeat, though he could not have said whether the heart was Erik’s or his own. The bond they’d created was only stronger now – fused tightly by Erik’s fear, and Charles’ … 

“Get Elisha!” someone called. “Prophet can save him!”

“Yes, yes, get him,” Charles said, but he didn’t budge. He wrapped his fingers tightly around Erik’s and whispered, “Hang on. Help will be here any moment. You have to hang on.”

Erik opened one eye; his stare was dull and unfocused. Rain pattered down on them, and ripples spread out in the trails of Erik’s blood. “Charles.”

“That’s right. It’s Charles. I’m here, and I won’t leave you.”

Slowly Erik’s hand tightened around Charles’, but his grip was so weak.

Hank crouched near them, his blue fur spattered with mud. Although he leaned close enough to examine Erik, he didn’t begin taking action; instead he paused, then drew back. Very quietly, he said, “Erik needs a hospital, immediately. Or Elisha.”

Meaning that there was nothing Hank could do.

Charles touched two fingers to Erik’s cheek, then held his palm out above Erik’s head, trying to shelter him from the rain just a bit. Such a stupid thing to do, but he wanted to do something …

Wait. Was it possible?

He breathed in, pulling toward him all the pain he sensed from Erik – then more of it, then more again. At first it burned. Then it blazed. The crushing sensation in Charles’ skull made him gasp and retch; it was so hard to believe that it wasn’t real. But it was real – Erik’s real pain, taken from him for at least these few moments. Charles would endure it if he could only spare Erik. And maybe sparing Erik would give him the strength to hang on until Elisha Ammon could arrive.

 _I’m here,_ Charles repeated, using his mind now instead of his voice. _I’m here for you._

 _Charles._ Erik’s mental “voice” was surprisingly strong. _What are you doing?_

_Carrying the weight._

_Don’t –_

_I must._

_Charles_ , Erik thought again, and his thumb moved against Charles’ palm, the only caress he had the strength to give.

“Prophet!” someone cried, and the call went up from every side. Unwilling to break his concentration, Charles did not look away from Erik until he actually saw Elisha’s feet stepping closer. Then he glanced up – and his blood ran cold.

Elisha looked down at Erik, genuinely stricken. His pallor, his trembling: He was in real shock, real fear for Erik’s life. And yet those changeable eyes betrayed his hesitation. Through his powers, Charles understood why Elisha wasn’t healing Erik already.

It was because of him. Because of their clasped hands. Because of the connection between Charles and Erik, Elisha was considering allowing Erik to die.

That was the only thing that could have made Charles let go.

“You can save him,” Charles said as he pulled back his hand. Others would be able to hear. He would proclaim Elisha’s power and authority before the world, if only Elisha would spare Erik. “I know you can.”

Elisha bent down beside Erik so fluidly that it was as though he’d never paused. His long-fingered hands pressed against Erik’s chest, and he closed his eyes.

Through his bond with Erik, Charles felt the healing power, a warmth that glowed through every cell, every atom. The candlelight steadied, burned brighter, became a fire. Charles gasped as he saw the golden glow surrounding Elisha like a halo, and as Erik’s pain shriveled and vanished in its light.

It ended as swiftly as it had begun. Everyone began praying and cheering as Erik sat up; Elisha slumped against Erik’s shoulder, clearly exhausted. The others hadn’t been lying when they said healing took a lot out of him. But Charles could hardly think of whether that was a vulnerability he could use – not with Elisha reaching up to stroke his long fingers through Erik’s muddied hair. The burnished gold of his heavy bracelet brushed against Erik’s chest.

“You are the Jonathan to my David,” Elisha whispered. “In my weakness I almost forgot. Forgive me, Erik. I will never do so again. Promise me you will never forget either.”

“Never,” Erik said. Through their psychic bond, Charles could tell that Erik meant it, body and soul.

Exhausted, awkward, Charles pushed himself to his feet and stumbled away. Even as he did so, though, he heard Erik’s voice in his mind: _Thank you._

Charles half-turned – betraying that he could still hear – but only he and Erik would know it. Just as only they would know that in those agonizing moments of fear, when Erik truly believed he was about to die, he had wanted Charles with him … and hadn’t thought of Elisha at all.

Their eyes met for one tortured moment before Erik was folded in Elisha’s embrace, and Charles walked away through the mud.

 

**

 

That afternoon, prayers were more fervent than usual. It began in thanksgiving for Erik’s life, but went into a new direction.

“Our survival is so precious,” Elisha said. He didn’t stand before them all today; instead he sat in a woven-cane chair that somehow seemed like a throne. Still he was weary from healing Erik – who sat at the edge of the stage, completely well, as if nothing had ever happened. Though this alone comforted Charles, he couldn’t help but feel the urgency of the connection between them, and the rawness of knowing it would never be fully completed. At first he hardly paid attention as Elisha continued, “Yes, we are the stronger. Yes, we are the more gifted. Yes, we are the recipients of the greatest gifts of God. But we are also few, my children, and they – the humans – they are many.”

Murmurs from the crowd, less the revival-tent call-and-response Charles was used to, and more … dismay. His attention shifted from Erik to the overall mood of the crowd, which had begun to slip from thankfulness to fear.

“I have looked into the future,” said Elisha – no, Prophet. “There are many paths, and so many lead to our destruction. To our extermination.”

Parents reached for their children. Some of the older ones bowed their heads, perhaps thinking of dangers they had faced when they were alone.

“They will claim that God hates us.” Prophet’s voice grew louder; the gleam in his eyes was almost otherworldly now. “They will claim that we are the enemies of all that is good and right. It will come to pass, for I tell you now, I have _seen_ it. I built the Church of the Transformation to show them how wrong they were – how we could care for one another, lift each other up – how our transformed selves might yet transform the wicked, corrupt world – ”

Applause now, and more calls of assent, but the crowd’s paranoia only intensified. 

Despite the powerful sway Prophet’s words had over the crowd, Charles could tell they weren’t being said only for effect. This was not mere fear-mongering; Prophet believed every word he spoke, believed it with his whole heart.  The intensity of his belief blinded him to the contradictions of his actions. If he wanted his church to demonstrate anything to humans, then the church had to actually speak to humans – to welcome them instead of exclude them. If he wanted their community to show anything about what mutantkind was capable of, then who were they supposed to show it to now that they were hidden in an enclave in the least populated area of Puerto Rico? Prophet genuinely believed he’d tried his best to improve how mutants were seen in the world, while his every action had ensured that in fact he had changed nothing.

Prophet’s voice rang out now, his righteous anger giving strength to his weary body. “Though they never see it, we shall live as one! Though they hunt us, though they despise us, we shall remain as one! Though they seek to tear us apart, we shall die as one!”

Everyone began to cry out, hoarse desperate cries that revealed each of them felt the same chill that had just cut Charles to the bone.

Afterwards, the same groups didn’t congregate for conversations as before. Charles searched for Angel, as usual; they had taken to meeting up at this time to tacitly reaffirm the fiction that they were a happy couple. But today he didn’t see her. Probably she was just hurrying back to some unfinished chore; Elisha’s optimistic timetables for the glory of Utopia weren’t allowed to slow down for anything as mundane as rainstorms.

So Charles paid her absence little mind – then forgot it completely as he saw Raven.

His sister had been dodging him since that second day, never so overtly that anyone else would notice, but always enough to sure that she and Charles were never truly alone. Now, however, she stood at the edge of the main clearing, apart from the others – waiting for him, he realized with relief.

“There you are,” he said as he came to her side. Almost without thinking, he held his hand out for her the way he used to do when they were children – and to his surprise, she took it. They had missed each other more than they could easily admit.  

But whatever relief Charles might have felt faded as he saw the fear in Raven’s eyes. 

Still, he had to begin carefully. “How are you?”

She shrugged and laughed – as though at a bad joke. “Elisha would say I’m better than ever.”

What did that mean? It came to Charles in a rush – a wave of his telepathy, stronger and more vivid than before, though he was in too much shock to revel in that small triumph. There, tucked within the creases and folds of her hopes for Utopia, her adoration of Elisha Ammon, her knowledge that things here weren’t right and her fear of what would happen, was the image of a baby yet unborn. “Oh, my God.”

Her golden eyes flickered toward his – astonishment at how much he could read within minds now – but she seemed glad not to have to explain. “I’m not sure yet. More sure than I was, but – it’s not for certain. Hank says we don’t have the equipment here to test until – Charles, I thought I wanted this, but now I don’t know.”

The red-skinned man she stayed with, danced with – the one Charles now realized was her “husband” by the laws of Utopia – was named Azazel. Charles had hardly interacted with him and didn’t know what to make of the man. “Do you love Azazel?”

Raven struggled for her answer. “I – I think I could – that I would – if I weren’t being _told_ to.” When Charles squeezed her fingers, she added, “By the way, how’s Angel?”

“Very well.” Not even to his sister would Charles admit the true state of affairs between them; it was too dangerous. Besides, this was only Raven’s way of shying away from a subject that scared her. “How long have you suspected?”

“Since the day after you arrived. I was due, and I didn’t start, and – ” She shrugged. Charles – who had been forced to make his first Kotex-buying run to the store when he was only 16 – knew nearly as well as Raven did that she never ran late. “I wanted to be happy about it. I knew I should be, because it’s one more mutant in the world – ”

At last Charles understood her about-face when they’d talked on his second day here. Raven had been desperately attempting to convince herself that Utopia, and Elisha Ammon, were all she wanted them to be, because the alternative was an unwanted pregnancy with a man she liked but still hardly knew. Now that Charles’ powers had grown, he already found it hard to believe he hadn’t realized that at the time; it was uncanny how far his talents really reached, how much he’d been able to develop them in a short time, once he finally had fellow mutants to work with.

“Raven?” Charles worded this very carefully. “Would you want to raise your child in Utopia?”

“I wouldn’t want to raise a mutant in a world that hated him. Rejected him.”

“What if that didn’t happen?”

Raven stared away from him. “It works for people like us, or Alex, or Armando. People who can pass. But Azazel, or Hank, or Angel – it’s different for them. And there’s no telling what this baby will be – would be, might be, because I _still don’t know_ – ”

He repeated himself, changing the emphasis. “Would you want to raise your child here? The way things are?”

She hesitated so long that Charles thought he might have gone too far. Finally, though, she shook her head. “Not the way things are. What I thought Utopia was – what it ought to be – that’s what I’d want for a child. That and _nothing less_.”

A sigh of relief escaped Charles, so deep that he nearly shuddered. Despite all of Elisha Ammon’s mind games, despite the tremendous emotional stresses tearing her in multiple directions, Raven did recognize the problems here. She was not Elisha’s creature; she remained herself, deep down.

Leaning closer to her, he murmured, “We could go back to New Salem for a while. You could go to a proper clinic. Rest up. Decide what you wanted to do. Azazel could come with us, if you wanted.”

“He wouldn’t,” Raven said, which sidestepped the question of what she wanted, or didn’t want.

The pain and turmoil churning within her seared Charles’ heart, but he tried to focus on the most important thing: Raven was in. When he left, she would come with them. He’d be able to save his sister after all.

His good mood lasted until he went back to his hut for the daily meeting, and Angel wasn’t there.

“She’s been summoned to speak with Prophet,” said one of the women, loftily. Her husband looked nearly as satisfied as she did, and Charles had a sudden mental image of them – him with his golden scales, her with electrical sparks shimmering around her fingertips – standing before Elisha. Confessing their “concerns” about Angel and Charles. They’d reported on her.

Charles knew better than to acknowledge any of this aloud. He simply said, “Then we’ll see her at dinner,” and took his seat beside Armando. Within, his heart pounded with anger and fear. When Armando glanced his way, his expression making it clear that Angel wouldn’t be at dinner, Charles fought not to react to that either.

Only afterward, when they were walking to their meal, did Charles allow himself to fall into step beside Armando. “Where would – ” 

“Do not look at me,” Armando said. “Don’t speak. I’m warning you, and this is for your good and Angel’s not mine. Understand?”

The rawness of the fear Armando felt shocked Charles, made him feel queasy inside, but he obeyed instructions.

Still speaking in a low tone, Armando continued, “We’re all supposed to be happy. Someone’s not happy, someone else tells Elisha about it. If he thinks it’s a problem he can solve, you know, he’ll fix it. But once in a while, he decides the problem is you. Then you get disciplined. And that’s bad.”

What the hell did that mean, “disciplined”? 

“Best thing you can do for Angel now is nothing. Maybe they’re just talking to her – sometimes that’s all that happens, them talking at you for a long time until you don’t know what you think anymore. It might blow over. Don’t freak unless she doesn’t show up at bedtime. Got me?”

Charles nodded. But with his powers, he swept outward, trying to catch the particular flavor/tenor/shape of Angel’s mind. This was fairly new for him, but surely he could do it –

\--then, for one instant, he saw her so vividly she might have been right in front of him. She was sitting in a chair somewhere dark and windowless. Other people were in the room around her, other mutants, but they were too indistinct for Charles to glimpse; who they were didn’t matter to Angel at this moment, which meant he couldn’t sense them through her. All he knew was that she was terrified.

 _Be strong,_ he thought. _I’m here. I’ll find you. Okay?_

Maybe Angel heard the words; maybe she simply sensed the presence of his mind and the reassuring tone he wanted to convey. It helped her, for that instant – but then he lost his grip and she was invisible to him again.

At dinner, as always, Charles sought Erik in the crowd … but where he had always before felt longing, or envy, he now felt a bewilderment that was tipping toward anger. How could a man so principled, so protective, give his allegiance to anyone as manipulative as Elisha Ammon? How could Erik overlook the cruelties Elisha perpetrated, or the hypocrisy on which Utopia was built?

 _Ask yourself the real question_ , Charles thought as he used his fork to push mashed plantains around his tin plate. _You want to know how Erik could love someone like Elisha._

But what did it matter? Erik was aligned with Elisha, committed to him, absolutely. His love … wasn’t Charles’ concern. For all Charles knew, Erik might be aware of what was happening to Angel now; he might have helped to plan it.

Charles wondered how he could have so nearly given his heart to a man who might not even be worthy of his trust.

Night drew on. Angel didn’t reappear. As the others began readying for bed, Armando shot Charles a warning glance – hinting that it would still be safest for Charles to stay out of it.

Instead, Charles pulled his boots back on and left the hut. Water pattered down from the sky – not the hard, driving rain that had dominated the morning, but a steady drizzle that ensured his damp clothes would never dry. He strode across the grounds of Utopia straight to Elisha Ammon’s cabin. Two mutants stood there, one of then Janos, the other someone Charles had yet to know; he realized that they were serving as guards. Any religious leader who needed guards outside his door was one unworthy of the honor, Charles thought.

Janos moved as though to question him, but Charles sidestepped Janos and pounded on the door. “Elisha!” he called. “It’s Charles Xavier!”

Almost immediately, Elisha answered the door. He wore the same clothes he had all day – bedraggled, now, and splotched with mud – but he seemed to have regained his vigor since the healing. “I was wondering whether you’d come.” 

“Where’s Angel?”

“Come in.” Elisha then turned to Janos and said, “Fetch Erik here. Right away. And a few of the others in security – you know who." 

What was this supposed to mean? Charles didn’t like the strange, feverish energy within Elisha now. But no one else would have the authority to free Angel, which meant Charles now had to deal with Elisha on his own terms.

“You’re not happy here, I think,” Elisha said.

“I can’t be happy when Angel’s –” Charles bit back several dangerous words, like _confined_ or _hurt_. “—missing.”

“We have her, as you well know. We’ve been talking with her – about happiness, and other things.” Elisha’s voice had a strangely hypnotic quality, lulling and yet eerie at the same time.

Forget politeness. “What are you doing to her?”

Elisha shook his head. “Now you sound like a concerned husband. If you’d taken on that role earlier, we wouldn’t have to have this – unpleasantness now.”

“Unpleasantness?”

“I wasn’t referring to what’s happening with Angel. I was referring to – whatever are we to do with you, Charles? How am I to make my point clear?”

Then the door opened. Janos and a couple of the other guards entered Elisha’s cabin – and with them was Erik, who looked confused. He opened his mouth, as if to ask a question, then went very still as he saw Charles standing there.

Elisha motioned to the chair. “Sit down, Charles. Rest while you can. We’re going to settle a few things tonight, once and for all.”

Charles couldn’t sense enough of Elisha’s mind to know what precisely he meant. What he could sense was Erik’s fast-growing fear for him – so sharp and so certain that Charles understood the best thing he could do would be to run for the door and try to force his way out.

But he also knew the mutant guards were loyal to Elisha, and that their powers were more than a match for his own. And finally, he knew that any violent resistance now would be taken out on Angel.

All he could do was sit – and wait for Elisha’s true nature to be revealed. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heed the warnings/tags here, guys. 
> 
> **

Elisha stood in front of Charles, looking down on him. The intensity of his changeable gaze blinded Charles to almost everything else, except for the shadow cast by Erik. He still stood in the doorway, the space between Charles and freedom. The only light was cast by the lantern beside Elisha’s bed; it flickered orange-gold, but too dim, seeming less to add brightness and more to emphasize how dark his surroundings really were.

“As I said, we’ve been talking to Angel all day.” Elisha paced slowly before Charles. The air smelled of earth and sweat and rain. “She’s shared some very intimate things with us.”

As though Angel had gone to him of her own free will! But Charles kept a handle on his temper. His first priority was ensuring that nothing worse happened to her; close behind it was finding out precisely how much Elisha now knew. If Angel had been intimidated or tortured into revealing their escape plans – then everyone Charles had spoken to about it, from Raven to Hank to Armando, was now in imminent danger.

“Where is she?” Charles asked as humbly as he could manage. He could defer to Elisha. Bow to him. Beg him. Whatever it took to make sure Angel and the others were safe. “I’d just like to see her. Please.”

Elisha smiled. “You’re worried about Angel.” 

“Yes, of course.”

“You’ve come to care about her.”

“Very much.” It was the truth. Though he and Angel would never be husband and wife in the way Elisha dreamed, she had come to mean a great deal to Charles in a very short time.

And this, Charles realized, was something Elisha himself didn’t understand about Utopia. He believed he controlled all the interactions between people here – and his control was indeed considerable. But real emotions, real intimacy, slipped in between the cracks. There were bonds and friendships here that Elisha hadn’t even guessed at, and they were the weapons Charles might use to bring him down.

 _Bonds. Friendships. Maybe even love_ , he thought, as he glanced at Erik –   

“You see? So concerned for her, though they hadn’t even met one month ago.” Elisha glanced up, his smile triumphant. Charles flushed as he realized that Elisha was looking at Erik, as if he’d caught Charles staring at him. Was this entire scene all about “proving” to Erik that Charles was in love with Angel? Erik knew better; of that Charles was certain. “It almost always works out, in the end. You just have to – sharpen the edge, sometimes.  I’d bet Charles himself didn’t realize how much he cared until tonight.” 

“Why am I here?” Erik said sharply. 

“Because we’ve grown too distant, these past few months. Because you are a part of my life, and all my plans, and because I want you to see what I have seen in everyone here in Utopia.”

Erik didn’t believe him. There was no sign of suspicion on Erik’s unmoving, stoic face, but Charles felt it through their enduring mental connection – like a surge of electrical current that made his spine tingle. Was it possible that Elisha’s hold on Erik was finally beginning to crack?

He desperately hoped so – but at the moment, it was his fear for Angel that concerned Charles more. He focused on Elisha intently, and now he let some of his anger show. “What have you done to her?”

But Elisha seemed even more pleased. “Now, that sounds like a loving husband. We just want more of that.”

“If you want me to be a good husband, then let me see my wife.”

“Not yet. But you’d like someone to check on her? Would you like Erik to go?”

Erik was the only person Charles would have trusted in this situation. “Yes, please.”

“Very well.” Elisha glanced over at Erik. “You’ll take charge of Angel for the evening – Janos knows where she is, so go with him. Stay with her until I send for you both. Charles will remain with me. We should chat privately, I think.”

Erik hesitated, and Charles reached through the connection they shared, willing Erik to hear and understand him. _Please go get Angel and make sure that she’s safe. Please do this for me._

Instantly Erik responded, as though they spoke to one another’s minds constantly and had for years _. Elisha’s_ _– scared of you, fascinated by you, and the fascination is even more dangerous than the fear._

Erik would know. But Charles sent back. _Whatever it is, I can handle it. All we can do now is make sure Angel’s unharmed._

Slowly Erik nodded and said to Elisha, “All right.”

Elisha smiled at him, and mixed in with his affection was some relief. He had wondered whether Erik would say something, Charles realized; this had been a test of sorts, and Erik had passed it. Maybe this was all Elisha had wanted. “Go, then. Return to us.”

Erik replied, “If you need me, call for me.” Elisha smiled, thinking Erik was speaking to him. Charles knew better. He nodded once, which was reassurance enough for Erik to finally go.

Charles had no intention of pulling Erik any deeper into this, but he held close the knowledge that Erik had offered his help. Elisha’s hold on him was breaking at last – and yet that didn’t feel quite right. There was something about Erik’s connection to Elisha that he had yet to comprehend …

“Now this is a bit quieter,” Elisha said. Only two guards remained within the hut, and they had pulled back to the edge of the door, so that it seemed as though Charles was alone with him. “We can discuss more – personal subjects. Such as my conversations with Angel today.”

A chill rippled through Charles despite the steamy night. Had their plans been revealed?

Instead, Elisha said, “She confirmed what your friends in the hut confided to me – that you two have failed to have sex since your wedding night. That you’re not working to conceive a child.”

Was that all? Yes. Charles felt almost unimaginable relief, and pure, brilliant admiration for Angel. Even when she was held captive, interrogated and frightened by people who had absolute control over her, she’d kept the most important secret and refused to speak of their escape plans. Her bravery had saved everyone.

Elisha continued, “Do you not support Utopia, Charles? Do you not want a place of safety for our kind? I would have thought you valued that above all other things.”

“I do.” Didn’t he? “But I don’t see why Utopia has to be in the shape you’ve defined here. I don’t see why we can’t shape it for ourselves.”

It was like dropping a match in gasoline. Elisha’s eyes lit up, and suddenly the physical power he usually masked was evident. “For ourselves! Each man an architect! Do you know what that leads to? Chaos. Separation. Schism. I want something better for mutants. Something beyond what you ever dreamed.”

“You don’t know my dreams.”

“Don’t I? Let me tell you who and what you are. You’re a would-be academic who can’t make up his mind whether he owns the world or needs to hide from it. You see the ugliness of human nature in every mind, every day, and yet you persist in believing the best of them, half out of idealism and half out of perversity. You’ve dreamed of creating a place not so different from Utopia … just different enough to collapse under the weight of every opinion, every argument, every weed in the garden you tend along with the flowers. And you have no idea of either your true strength or your true fragility. That is who you are, Professor X.” 

Here, mutant names were a sign of the seriousness of a moment – and Charles decided to respond in turn. “And you, Prophet, are a bully well on the way to being a tyrant. You clutch everyone in this place tighter and tighter in your fists until you threaten to crush them. You claim to be my friend, but really you want to crush me too.”

Elisha paused for so long that Charles braced himself for anything – anything except what happened, which was that tears began to well in Elisha’s eyes. He whispered, “The truth, except for one thing. I don’t want to crush you, Charles. I want – I want to _change_ you. To make you see what I have seen.” 

“By threatening Angel?”

“Angel must see it. You must see it. We must join together under one truth or we are lost.” Elisha’s fingers brushed through Charles’ hair, a touch so intimate that it startled. Blinking back tears, he continued, “I’d thought you’d be easier to convince than Erik was, back in the day. But how wrong I was. He’s so obviously powerful – a lightning bolt of a soul. But it’s not lightning bolts that shape the earth. It’s rain. You are the rain, Charles.”

This was going in a direction Charles wasn’t sure he understood. Elisha kept stroking Charles’ hair, which suggested – but no. Surely not. His devotion to Erik, regardless of how twisted up it could be, was entirely sincere, and wasn’t this entire evening about convincing him to be a husband to Angel? Charles focused on another thing that confused him: “Why do you keep comparing us to one another? Erik and I.”

Elisha’s hand froze in place. The flicker of thought and feeling Charles caught from his mind then was unexpected. It was – fear, yes, but not a lover’s jealousy, or even that of someone striving to maintain his status. This was a more primal emotion, a more all-encompassing terror.  What Charles had said about Erik … in some way, it touched on something that horrified Elisha to the core, something he wanted to keep hidden at all costs? But what?

Weirdly, the image that appeared in Charles’ mind, accompanying this fear, was only that of Elisha’s heavy bracelet.

That bracelet brushed cool against Charles’ cheek as Elisha went back to that same rhythmic motion, so quickly a non-telepath might not have caught the pause. “Tell me the truth, Charles. Why won’t you try to have a child with Angel? You like children, I think.”

“Angel and I are still getting to know one another. I haven’t been here all that long yet, you know, and she and I – ”

“Are a man and a woman. A very beautiful woman, and a very handsome man. What else do you need to know?”

“Love songs to the contrary, you need quite a lot more than that. I can’t help noticing you don’t have a wife yourself.”

Elisha simply shrugged. “That does not mean I’m not working to create more mutant children. I work toward this in many ways.” He cocked his head, studying Charles intently. “But let us get to the point, shall we? It is my suspicion – my belief – that beautiful women do not much concern you, Charles. You are a homosexual.”

Charles didn’t know whether his combination of occasional romantic feeling for women and strong sexual attraction to men marked him as a homosexual, a bisexual or something else Freud hadn’t coined a term for. Still, at its core, what Elisha had said was the truth. He felt no need to defend himself against this charge … from anyone, but most particularly from Elisha. “Aren’t you? I thought you and Erik were together – or that you had been.”

“Erik is one of my lovers here. The one I have kept longest, and the one I cherish most dearly. But I do my duty. Many of the women here have shared my bed; many more shall. Perhaps I will father a child. Perhaps I already have.”

This was hardly the whole story. Charles remembered that Erik was not required to marry, most likely because Elisha wanted him for himself. “Then you believe homosexuality isn’t a sin.”

“No. The only sexual sin is withholding your genetic material. Refusing to create more mutants to stand against the wave of humanity coming to drown us all. Homosexual love is only one more way to draw us together, but when it interferes with the creation of new life – well, then we have a problem.” Elisha’s gaze suddenly became gentler, almost tender. His voice was hardly more than a whisper as he said, “Perhaps I rushed you, when I needed to draw you closer. Maybe I only needed to give you – an outlet.”  

Too late, Charles realized why Erik had resisted leaving. He’d guessed Elisha might try something. But he hadn't guessed _this_ ; Erik would never have left if he had.

But what, precisely, was this? Obviously it was intended as a seduction; just as obviously, a seduction wasn’t going to work – and Elisha had to know that, didn’t he? 

Elisha glanced over at the guards. “Stand outside the door until I call you again.”

Charles said, “It’s all right. They can stay.” But the guards were already going. They’d stop anyone from coming in, even Erik. Would they stop Charles from leaving if he tried to? Was this a seduction, or force?

If he couldn’t tell the difference, then it was force.

No, surely not. Charles tried a different tack. “I don’t particularly need an, um, outlet.”

“You need love. Everyone needs that. And I think, for you, it’s been too long since anyone looked into your eyes with anything close to the love I feel for you.”

Sickeningly, this was true. “I’d really rather go.”

“I’d rather you stayed,” Elisha said, in the tone of voice that made his word law.

He could run for it. No, the guards would stop him. But if he shouted, screamed, struggled – if he called for Erik in his mind – Elisha wouldn’t be able to touch him then.

But then what?

Erik would fight for him; Charles knew that now. He also knew they were likely to lose. His own telepathy wasn’t yet equal to the task of changing the minds of Elisha or the guards, and while Erik’s mastery over metal was considerable, they were in an environment made up of wood and rope rather than steel beams. Could they stop Elisha without hurting him seriously, even killing him? If they did kill the beloved Prophet, they would be trapped in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of enraged mutants who loved Elisha and would not hesitate to use their powers to avenge him. If Raven, Angel, Hank or any of the others joined forces with him, they’d only be cut down too. He had almost a dozen people together, ready to leave, but they were no match for the combined forces of the rest of Utopia.

No. They couldn’t do that. He was scared; that was why he was thinking about fighting. There were other ways out, weren’t there?

Elisha’s fingers traced along the lines of Charles’ face, as if memorizing him by touch. “How is it that I never recognized your beauty before? Those eyes. I ought at least to have seen the perfection of your eyes.”

“I didn’t mean to be distracting.” The joke came out shaky; he was fooling no one. Better not to pretend he didn’t understand what was going on. Charles cleared his throat. “This is unexpected.”

“Is it? In some ways we have much in common. In others, we are opposites – but what is religion but the synthesis of opposites? Light and darkness, anger and love. We must come together, you and I. Isn’t this the best and most pleasurable way?” Elisha smiled. "Think of the passion of St. Theresa. Ecstasy isn't so far from revelation."

Charles realized that Elisha was calling his bluff. Perhaps he wasn’t even doing it consciously – the emotions Charles was picking up from him now were manipulative but neither violent nor cruel. Still, Elisha wanted them to make love, and the only way for Charles to get out of it was to defy him.

To defy him was to announce that he would never be convinced, never be converted to Elisha’s vision of Utopia.

If Charles walked out of here without going to bed with Elisha, he would do so as Elisha’s enemy. And he could not afford that, not now, not with so many other people’s lives and safety dependent on him.

Charles’ heart thumped wildly in his chest as he tried to think of an out that wouldn’t endanger Erik and the others. He couldn’t.

“Come here,” Elisha murmured. A small smile played upon his lips, and Charles knew then – Elisha was doing it consciously, intentionally. His was the sick delusion of the rapist convinced his victim can be _made_ to love him, that rape is nothing more than forcing someone to accept love, and in the end they’ll live happily ever after.

It was the first moment Charles thought of what was about to happen as rape. 

 _I’m choosing this_ , Charles told himself. _I’m choosing to endure it. He can’t rape me if I choose to get through it to protect the others. Maybe it’s something I can use to manipulate him later, if he thinks I like it. So this isn’t rape. This is just – just something I have to do, to get what I want._  

He rose from the chair, and submitted to Elisha’s kiss. Though he didn’t respond to the caresses Elisha trailed down his back and hips, along his chest, that didn’t seem to be expected. Charles just kept his mouth open for each kiss. His eyes were open, too, though Elisha’s were closed. 

“I need you close to me,” Elisha whispered against Charles’ throat. “Be close to me, Charles.”

“I don’t – we don’t have to – not tonight. It doesn’t have to happen tonight.”

This feeble gambit was useless. “I want it to happen tonight. You’ll see. In the end, I know you’ll see. Take off your clothes for me. I want to see you entire.”

 _All right. I can do this. It’s just – bodies, that’s all._ His hands shook as he fumbled with his sandals, then his belt. Elisha watched, changeable eyes darkening as Charles slipped out of his shirt. Carefully Charles folded each item of clothing – pants, then shorts – and put them on the chair, so they wouldn’t be dirty later. For some reason that felt important.

By now Elisha had begun to undress too. His white linen shirt fell from his shoulders, leaving his upper body bare except for that heavy, intricate bracelet around his forearm. He was more muscular than Charles had realized; his body’s power was hidden by his long, lean build. Yet in this moment Charles could not see him as beautiful. His thinness was that of a blade.

Elisha’s hands went to his belt. “Lie down on the bed.”

Charles walked there with halting steps, feeling utterly awkward and vulnerable. Never had he been so conscious of his own nudity. His lack of arousal – natural though it was – seemed to give the lie to this entire psychodrama Elisha wanted to stage. But as Elisha stripped naked, his cock already rigid and thick, it was clear that no deviations from the script would be acknowledged.

As Elisha stretched next to him, Charles tried one more time. “But what about Erik? The two of you – ”

“Erik will understand, in the end. He always does. He is a good and loyal man.” Elisha’s hand cupped Charles’ limp cock, as though testing its weight. “But you are as precious to me as he is. I must make you understand that. You will be my right and left hand, the two of you. We will be inseparable. You will both be guided by my light, and I will love you forever.”

And with that, Elisha dipped his head to suck Charles’ cock.

Charles laid there, hands on Elisha’s hair, staring at the ceiling of the hut. Dark lines of dampness between a few of the slats revealed that even Prophet’s home in Utopia wasn’t perfect; the rain was getting in.

After a while he began to get hard – impossible not to, if someone was sucking vigorously enough, and Elisha honestly seemed to be eager to give pleasure. But pleasure wasn’t the word for what Charles was feeling. His heart beat harder and faster, but what ought to have been arousal seemed only to be feeding his fear. He kept his eyes on the ceiling, because he desperately didn’t want to actually see Elisha giving him head.

 _If I came, would he stop? Would this all stop? Maybe he wouldn’t even do anything else, if he thought I enjoyed it, that he owned me now._ But Charles couldn’t come. For that, he had to let go, and he couldn’t.  

Elisha pulled his mouth away and licked his lips. “Enough for now, I think. I want you to wait a while longer for release.”

No worries there. “Okay.”

But then Charles startled as he looked closer at Elisha’s face. To his astonishment, Elisha had once again wept. The tracks of his tears stretched down his angular cheekbones.

“You think I don’t know how you fear me?” Elisha said. “I know. It destroys me. That’s all I want for tonight, Charles – for you to realize that it destroys me. To see what I could give to you if you would only stop fighting me. Stop fighting. Know that I love you.”

 _He’s mad_ , Charles thought. That didn’t feel true, but he had no other way to explain the contradictions within Elisha. And it was something to think about besides his own rape. _No._ _Something I have to do to get what I want. That’s all it is. All it is. I could stop him if I wanted to. I think I could._

Elisha still wore that ornate bracelet, the one that was so important to him. It shone brightly as Elisha climbed over him, lean arms on either side of Charles’ shoulders. “Stay on your back, I think. I want to watch your face.”

Charles nodded. What did it matter? His humiliation was so complete, and yet so inconsequential to Elisha, that whatever expression he wore would be meaningless. Elisha’s willful blindness – it was as though he were demanding to see the world’s real faces, while simultaneously forcing everyone to wear a mask.

But then Elisha pushed Charles’ knees up toward his shoulders, and any such analysis was lost. All that remained was stark fear.

Elisha slicked himself with some shiny Vaseline or such beside the bed, but this didn’t quell Charles’ rising panic. His fingers clutched at the scratchy sheets, as if holding on more tightly to the bed would somehow help. He refused to meet Elisha’s eyes; it was the last resistance left to him.

“You don’t even know how much I want you,” Elisha said, and then he pushed inside.

It hurt so much more than Charles had ever dreamed it would. Elisha had done little to prepare him, and his body was fighting back by instinct, ignoring the realities that trapped Charles here. He tried not to cry out, then wondered why the hell he was bothering. Elisha would probably think any noise meant he liked it. So when Elisha began thrusting in deeper, Charles gave in, shouting with every stroke.

“There, love.” Was he being encouraged or comforted? Charles didn’t know or care. He simply closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see Elisha’s torso arching with each thrust, or the ecstatic look on his face. “There we go.”

 _I’m not here. This isn’t happening. I’m pretending to let it happen to satisfy Elisha and protect the others, but he hasn’t really touched me. Not really. Not any way that matters – oh, God, oh, God, this_ hurts, _so much –_  

At least it ended quickly. Elisha found this arousing even if Charles didn’t, and within only a couple of minutes, he came hot and thick inside Charles’ body. Afterward, Elisha almost immediately stood, slipping on a robe and giving Charles a cup of water before leaning his head outside the door and murmuring something to the guards. Charles couldn’t hear what; he was only grateful that they hadn’t been told to come back inside. He rose unsteadily from the bed. The sooner he was dressed again, the better he would feel.

“Not yet,” Elisha said. He held his hand out, as though to push Charles’ shoulder back down toward the bed, but Charles flinched from the touch. If he had to wait on the bed a while longer, so be it. He could still feel Elisha’s come draining from him; better on the bed than on his own clothes, where he’d have to see the stains when he did laundry in the morning. 

That was bravado, of course. His gut was already cramping with fear at the thought that Elisha might not be done with him – might rape him again before the night was out –

Instead, however, Elisha simply drank his own water and studied Charles. He seemed to be utterly at ease again. “What a lovely man you are.”

“Thank you.” So inadequate, and yet, what else could he say? He’d be damned if he’d return the compliment.

“Stronger than you know. And yet more fragile too. Remember that.”

“You spoke about my fragility before.”

“I want to be certain you remember.”

Was that a threat? No, Charles thought – but then, what was it?

Before he could answer that question, though, people came through the doorway. Charles clutched at a bedsheet to cover himself.

When he saw Angel, his first reaction was relief: She was alive, safe, here. But then he took in her drawn face, her tattered clothes, her bloodshot eyes, and worst of all, the bent edge of one sensitive wing. What had she been through tonight? Angel’s eyes widened as she saw him in return, and he realized how he must look – naked and disheveled, as obviously anguished as she was. 

And behind Angel was Erik.

Erik sucked in a sharp breath. The only emotion Charles could feel from him was white-hot rage.

Did he think that Elisha had betrayed him, with Charles as a willing partner? Or did he glimpse the truth? Charles wanted to reach out to Erik’s mind – but if he revealed what had really happened, Erik would be provoked into a fight he could only lose. Already Charles thought he could endure whatever else he had to endure if only he didn’t have to see Erik hurt and humiliated in turn.

Elisha said, “Charles, Angel, the two of you have a choice to make.” He gestured for Angel to join Charles; she went to his side, and they clutched hands. Both their hands were clammy. “I married you against Charles’ will – and, apparently, against his inclinations.”

Erik’s gray eyes sought Charles’ for a moment, but Charles couldn’t meet his gaze long.

“Angel has insisted she wishes to remain with Charles, but I don’t want to be a bully or a tyrant.” Had something Charles said actually sunk in? But Elisha’s next words erased that brief hope. “So I give you both this choice. You can recommit to your marriage now, tonight, or I shall give Angel another husband. One ready to start a family now, so she need wait no longer.”

Charles went cold. Angel’s hand tightened around his. From the corner he could feel the avid hunger of the guards – hoping Angel would be given to one of them, after which they would consider using her body not only their right but their duty.

Angel’s thoughts were faint in his trauma-ravaged mind, but he still heard her: _Please don’t let me go if you let me go they’ll hurt me they kept saying they would they’ll do it tonight please please please._ The mental picture that accompanied this was some guard leering at Angel, bending back her fragile wing until she screamed.

He pulled her close. “We’ll stay married. We will. It’s going to be all right from now on. You’ll see.”

Elisha nodded as if satisfied. “And you, Angel? Your wishes are unchanged?”

“Yes. Charles and I want to be together. We do.” 

“Prove to me that my faith will be rewarded.” Elisha motioned toward where they sat on the bed.

At first Charles didn’t realize what he meant, but then it hit him, the second horror of the night. He thought he might have lost it completely but for Angel clinging to him. Her mind said, _It’s okay. We’ll get through it. I used to have to do it in front of people at the club sometimes. You forget after a while. It doesn’t matter_. She was so desperately afraid.

“I’m sorry for the lack of privacy,” Elisha said, “but given the circumstances, we must be certain.”

“This isn’t necessary,” Erik said. The quietness of his voice did not detract from the force of his meaning; if anything, it made it all the more obvious that he was on the verge of giving into a fury so white-hot no one in the room could mistake it. “Let them be.”

In that first moment, Charles could only revel in the knowledge that Erik would defy Elisha for him, that Elisha’s hold over Erik wasn’t unshakable after all. There was something else, too … that other quality to Erik’s anger Charles did not yet fully understand …

But then Elisha’s head turned sharply toward Erik – his entire body tense at this sign of rebellion – and Charles knew he had to act.

“It’s all right,” Charles said. “I understand why we have to do this. It’s okay. We’re ready.”

Erik would have protested, but Charles sent through their link – not words, because he didn’t have words for this, but a sense that Erik had to go along with this too, that they were all trapped and the only way out was through. He sent all his pleading, all his desperation, all his conviction that they would only be safe if they complied. Perhaps something else came through as well, because that alone probably wouldn’t have convinced Erik, and yet Erik’s self-control returned. Although Erik’s jaw clenched so tightly that Charles could see the muscles working in his face, he said no more.

Angel slipped off the remnants of her clothing. Charles still wasn’t sure he could answer, at least not until she took hold of him with her slim-fingered hands; her expertise combined with the sheer levels of adrenalin in his system did the trick. Though he never got more than half-hard, that was enough to work himself inside.

“There now,” Elisha said softly. He stood only feet away, watching Charles fuck Angel on the same bed where they’d had sex only minutes before. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

 _Better than being raped?_ But Charles simply closed his eyes and buried his face in the curve of Angel’s neck.

She was surprisingly calm now; after hours on end of being threatened with sexual assault by men she feared and loathed, a public display with a friend seemed bearable. Later, he knew, the impact would hit her, but tonight she was numb to it. Charles was grateful for that trick of her psyche and wished his own mind would follow suit. Because while this was far better than being raped by Elisha Ammon, it was degradation on top of degradation, ground glass against already raw nerves, the final thing he could not bear. And he could hear the guards breathing so hard they were practically panting – getting off on the sight of Angel being taken like this, still hoping to have her themselves – and he knew Erik was watching the whole while, which was as hard to take as any of the rest –

Reflexes took over, responding to motion and heat to sharpen the urge, and Charles went with it, thrusting hard and fast until he pushed himself over the edge. When he came, huffing out a sharp breath, Angel put her arms around him, as if to say, _Thank you. We’re safe._

Charles felt like he might be sick. Like there was nothing left of him, and never would be.

Afterwards, Elisha was kindness itself. He fretted over Angel’s torn wing, demanded to know which guard was responsible, and even said she should go to the medical tent. “We’ll get Hank in there to look after you.” By now most people would be in bed. “The others will take you – ”

“No,” Angel whimpered, pulling away from the two guards. Charles sent one word to her: _Erik._ Instantly she said, “Erik can take me.”

“Of course.” That answer pleased Elisha, as Charles had known it would; Elisha wanted another moment to be alone with him. But the worst was over – of that, Charles was sure. He could at least make sure Angel was taken care of.

She pulled on her ragged shirt, but the skirt was now almost falling apart; Erik grabbed a towel from a hook on the wall and gave it to her to knot around her waist. Charles glanced at him, wondering what he thought – but Erik’s attention was for Angel now as he guided her gently through the door, into the rain, toward Hank and safety.

The guards were inattentive now, their attention distant; the frisson of arousal Charles felt from them probably meant they were remembering the sight of Angel naked, envying him the chance to have her. Elisha had found some of the most venal ones at Utopia and turned them to the darker side of his will.

For now, though, Elisha stood before Charles, his gaze almost tender. “I’m sorry about that with Angel,” he said, and he _meant_ it, how could the bastard mean it? “But you’ll see. It won’t be so difficult for you two ever again. When she’s pregnant, you will have done your duty, and you’ll be free. With a child to look forward to, yet.”

Charles felt an odd pang at that. He didn’t want a baby now, and he didn’t want a baby with Angel, especially not one born of something like this, but he had always liked the idea of taking care of children of his own. Were Angel to become pregnant – it was unlikely now, given her cycle, but not impossible – what would he do?

“A pregnant wife, then a mutant child to care for and protect – and after that, you’d be freer than you’ve ever been before. You could have anything you wanted.”

By this, Elisha meant himself.

“I’ll do my duty,” Charles said. He could offer no more. Exhaustion – held at bay until now by adrenalin – was settling over him as heavy and oppressive as chains.

“Go.” Elisha’s hand brushed along the side of his face. “When we come together again, it will be at your request.”

It was laughable, except that it wasn’t. As Charles trudged back to his hut through the mud, rain spattering down on his weary, aching body, he wondered how many other people had been similarly “seduced.” Forced into situations where they had to give in to Elisha – yet with everything worded in such a way as to suggest that they had choices after all – then praised and stroked and told how precious they were – and trapped in a world where everyone worshipped Elisha: After such abuse, many people would convince themselves they loved their attacker, rather than confront just how twisted their situation truly was.

Charles didn’t think he was likely to fall prey to that particular variant of Stockholm Syndrome. And yet when he tried to think of Elisha tonight, he kept thinking back to his tears. To the sincerity of his desire for Charles to love him in return.

He crept into his hut, where everyone else was asleep or pretending to be. Charles sent a wave of pure loathing toward the couple who had reported him and Angel; they would feel it as either a shiver of dread or a nasty nightmare, either of which they richly deserved. Although he thought he was tired enough to sleep despite everything, he was wrong. Instead he lay in a stupor for hours, never really nodding off, never able to muster full consciousness. Elisha’s assault replayed in his mind endlessly, broken only by images of Angel shivering and afraid next to him, or the mute anguish in Erik’s gaze.

It was somehow worse to remember than to experience, Charles thought. Maybe it was because you could only experience it once, but remember it endlessly.

As the night wore on, the pain in his body became more acute, and he realized blood had dried all along his ass and thighs. The itch and ache wore away at his tiredness, until finally, in the hour before sunrise, Charles gave up any hope of rest. He crawled out of the hut and down to the river’s edge, stripping off his clothes as he went.

The water was usually warm, even at this early hour, but the rains had made it murky and cold. Charles sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as small tears in his flesh stung. But then he was able to dunk beneath the surface, to feel himself weightless, and maybe even clean – he wanted so badly to be clean again –

And a hand closed around his upper arm.

Charles came up ready to scream, or fight, but even as he broke through the water, his mind told him who it was waiting for him. Erik stood in the water – still clothed, getting soaked – his face stark with fright.

“Don’t,” Erik whispered. “Don’t. It will be all right. I promise you. I’ll make it right.”

“That wasn’t – I wouldn’t – ” Charles tried to calm himself. Panic fluttered inside him, still, too familiar now to be easily put aside. His chest rose and fell too quickly, and he began to feel dizzy.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to scare you – that’s the last thing I wanted to do.”

“I know. You thought I was committing suicide. You just wanted to help.” 

Charles meant it as an explanation, but Erik ducked his head, shamed. “I never should have left you with Elisha tonight.”

“You didn’t know.”

“He hurt you.” Erik closed his eyes for a moment, as if against physical pain. “If I’d dreamed he’d go that far, I would never have left. Never. And I should have acted the moment I realized what Elisha had done.”

“But I asked you not to. It would only have endangered us both, and others besides. We did what we had to do.” Charles’s voice cracked on the last words. Why hadn’t he let Erik defend him? Maybe it would have been better to go down fighting than to lie there and endure Elisha’s “love.”

Erik stood there, waist-deep in the river, clearly so unsure what to do or to say. Finally he ventured, “Is there any way I can help you now?”

Charles would have sworn he never wanted anyone to touch him again. Yet he pushed blindly into Erik’s chest, clutched him close, and closed his eyes as Erik’s arms went around him. For a few long moments, they stood there, the stream flowing around them, moonlight faint through the screen of clouds above. He listened to the strange rhythmic sawing of the insects in the heat, to Erik’s heartbeat. He felt as safe as it was possible for him to feel – not very, but a little – and as though the water was indeed washing him clean.

Erik hesitantly stroked one hand down Charles’ back – then again, and again. The touch was purely comforting, and Charles was glad to know he could still take some kind of pleasure in being touched, even if it were only this. It was all right for Erik to touch and be close, for Erik to see him naked and vulnerable. Elisha could make Charles doubt so much – even himself – but he couldn’t make him doubt Erik.

And when Charles spoke again, it was Erik he was thinking of. “You must have found that difficult tonight.”

“Seeing you hurt – brutalized – and Angel, too – it was difficult, yes, but I’m not worth thinking about. How are you?”

Charles wasn’t ready to answer that question. “I meant, discovering what Elisha’s capable of. That he’s not the man you thought he was.”

Erik did the last thing Charles expected; he laughed. “Do you think I only learned that tonight?”

As they pulled apart slightly, Charles looked up into Erik’s face – hard, with its fierce smile. Behind it, behind all that stark duty Erik used to discipline his mind, burned the fire Charles had sensed but never understood until now: a hatred more bitter than anything else Charles had ever known. “But – what he did – killing the man who hurt you –" 

“Elisha stopped being the man I first knew a long time ago. I’ve realized for a long time now that I can’t go on letting him rule my life, and so many others’ lives.”

“You mean you’ve been planning an escape from Utopia too?”

“No. I’ll never leave Elisha. I swore myself to him as long as he lived.” And there was the bedrock loyalty Charles had sensed before: It was not Erik’s loyalty to Elisha, but his absolute allegiance to his word, once given.

Charles tried to make sense of this, but his exhaustion and inner tumult were playing havoc with his powers. “You said you couldn’t go on like this.”

“I can’t. And I won’t allow Utopia to become a mutant prison we build ourselves.” Again Erik smiled that fierce smile. “I haven’t been planning to leave Elisha. I’ve been planning to kill him.” 


	6. Chapter 6

As the first hint of dawn softened the horizon, Erik and Charles sat together on the ground between their huts. Charles had soaked in the river until it felt like he was halfway clean; now his clothes clung to his wet skin as leaned back against a stump. Erik’s trousers were soaked through; his shirt still bore the dark, damp marks of Charles’ embrace. Charles found he liked looking at them – being able to see where they’d touched.

“My first doubts began when he founded the Church of the Transformation,” Erik said. He stared down at the muddy earth beneath them. “There was no questioning the depth of his belief, but – it seemed so unlike him. He had always been so hard before. So cynical about everything but mutants and our future. Then suddenly it was all about redemption and fellowship and … not that those are meaningless –”

“But they came out of nowhere.”

Erik nodded. “Less like a man converted, more like a man who’d chosen a strategy.” 

“You stayed, though.”

“I loved him.” Though Erik spoke simply, flickering within his mind was all the ache that came from the heart of a lonely man – a heart once pried open, once made to feel, and then neglected again. “Beyond that, I liked meeting other mutants. I knew Elisha was right about humanity coming after us someday. Even if I no longer shared his purpose the way I once had – even if it sometimes felt as if he loved something he saw in me that had little to do with who I really was – I told myself it hardly mattered. Not compared to what Elisha had given me. What I thought he could do for us all.”

Charles rested his head on his knees. His body and spirit still ached from Elisha’s abuse, but hearing Erik’s troubles didn’t add to his burden. Instead he felt lighter, in the strange way of sorrow shared. “When did you realize how much he had changed?”

“Shortly after we founded Utopia. When he began encouraging us to inform on one another if we weren’t true to his increasingly extreme ideals. I tried to talk to him a few times, but he would never listen. No – it wasn’t that he wouldn’t. He _couldn’t_. Elisha had become bewitched by his own nightmare of the future. He could hear nothing but that, not even me. Whatever remained of my love for him faded. And then – ” Erik’s anger flared again, kindling fast, though his face remained still; by now he hid his emotions as a matter of habit, Charles realized. “Then he began forcing marriages. Turning us against one another. Encouraging us to use one another. He had taken all the goodness, all the hope, all the trust of the mutants who had come here and used it to enslave us. No enemy could do more to hurt us than that. When I realized that, I knew I could never forgive him. Never.”

“That was when you decided to kill him?”

Erik shook his head. The rain-fat riven behind them rushed along so loudly that Charles could barely hear the whispered next words. “That came later.” 

Charles asked no more, merely waited. After a few seconds, Erik touched Charles’ hand – just for a moment, as if drawing the courage he needed, no more. 

“In the past few months, Elisha’s paranoia has deepened. He no longer dreams of a real future for mutantkind. Only of the ways he believes us destined to do. I begin to think – Charles, I now think that Elisha would rather we killed ourselves than be slaughtered. And I think he means to make that happen.”

That was the dark undertow pulling at everyone who had heard Elisha’s last sermon. Charles shuddered as he recognized that truth. “Dear God.”

“If that were to happen – if and when humanity comes for us, if they intend to kill us and we can’t defeat them, then yes, I’d rather die on my own terms.” Erik’s jaw tightened. “But Elisha won’t wait. He no longer wants to avert the apocalypse. He wants to control it. Even if controlling it means creating it. That I will not allow.”

Had it come down to talking about murder? Apparently it had. “How – ” Charles had to swallow before he could continue. “How do you intend to do it?”

Erik shrugged. “Easy enough, when the moment comes. A nail through his head. An iron bar around his neck. I’d rather it were quick, but whatever’s at hand – that’s what I’ll use.” 

“How will you get away, after? The true believers will be furious.”

“I don’t intend to get away.” At Charles’ shocked stare, Erik grinned that feral grin of his. “I swore Elisha my life. What he did for me – I can’t forget it. I don’t want to. If I take his life, I deserve to pay with my own.” 

“Erik, no.”

But the resolution within Erik would not yield; to Charles it felt like a wall of stone, impregnable, on the border of any existence Erik would allow himself to imagine.  “I know what I have to do. But I can see you to safety first, you and the others.”

Charles wanted to argue more – to plead, even to beg – but he knew it would be useless. Maybe in the moment, when Erik was looking at the reality of the situation instead of convincing himself to go through with it, Erik might change his mind. Until then, arguing would only made Erik dig in and refuse to yield. 

And what did it mean for Charles, that he could sit here and calmly contemplate the murder of a man? Even now, with the bruises of Elisha’s fingers darkening on his flesh, the memory of his own rape still vivid and raw, Charles had to remember the sincerity of Elisha’s belief. The goodness that still thrived in Utopia, even as its leader’s paranoia rotted the core. How could he so easily agree to killing Elisha?

_Not easily_ , he thought. _Never easily. But I could do it, if only because Elisha could do to another what he’s done to me._

He said only, “Erik, what precisely is Elisha’s mutation?”

“You know this. He can heal injuries, and he can see the future." 

“Healing injury, yes. I’m not so sure about the prophecy. Something about the pattern of his thoughts – he knows a lot about us, a lot about what could happen, but I don’t get the impression he’s truly seeing the future. That he’s hiding how he gets his information. I know this sounds crazy, but I think his bracelet has something to do with it.”

Erik was silent a few moments as he took that in. Finally he said, “I couldn’t say about the bracelet. I’ve always thought it’s just something he likes, but he never takes it off. And there are … gaps in what he sees. Errors, sometimes. More often now than before. When we first met, it was as though Elisha had seen tomorrow’s newspapers today. Now sometimes, I think, he’s just guessing. And yet there are still things he knows. Things that come true.” 

“Yes. He understands more about me than he should.”

“And me,” Erik agreed. “Elisha always said – even in those early days, when I was as much his willing slave as his lover – even then he said someday I might meet someone who blinded me to him. He even said it would be someone I disagreed with. A man who challenged me, antagonized me. But if I wasn’t careful, I would fall in love with that man even if it meant betraying everything else I’d sworn myself to. That we would be drawn to one another in an instant – unless I guarded against it. I told him he was insane. And yet it was just like that.” His eyes slowly rose from the muddy ground to meet Charles’ gaze, and it stole Charles’ breath like a blow.

When he could speak, he said, “Yes. Exactly like that.” 

How strange to think they’d never spoken of this before. This had been building between them ever since that first moment they’d met at the gates of Utopia, become one of the truths defining their lives, and yet they were only now saying the words. Charles took Erik’s hand, but he did no more. The corrosive memory of Elisha’s attack was still too new for Charles to enjoy any but the simplest contact. Erik understood. This one touch – one moment – was enough for now.

At last Erik said, “He even knew it was you. I think he knew almost the moment I did.” 

“He’s always wanted to keep us apart,” Charles agreed. Yet he felt there was more to this than Elisha’s romantic jealousy. Did he fear that Charles and Erik together would prove powerful enough to dethrone him? If so, Charles hoped very much to prove Elisha right.

“We have to act soon, Charles. Elisha’s building toward something dangerous, soon.”

“I felt that during the sermon. But others will have as well.” Charles took his hand back and ran it through his still-wet hair. “We might be able to get a few more people on board.”

“How many have you got involved?” 

“A couple dozen.”

“Good God. You work fast.”

“I try.” Charles smiled. “But I’ve had help. We need to meet in larger groups, though. All of us together would be ideal, but I don’t know if it’s possible.”

Erik thought about it for a moment. “Let me know who we need. I’ll put together a … repair committee. Set all of you to work on the hut that collapsed. While that’s going on, you can talk. I can’t be there; if I’m near you, Elisha will grow wary again. But you can tell me later.”

Dangerous, Charles thought, but worth the attempt. “All right. It’s a place to start.” 

The morning had begun to brighten; Erik squinted at the light and swore. “The woman I foisted laundry duty on should be out within a few minutes. I have to get back inside.”

“And I have to get started scrubbing.” After the unspeakable trauma of the night before, and still the laundry had to get done: Despite everything, Charles laughed.

“You’re all right?” Erik lifted his hand until it was right next to Charles’ cheek, but not touching Charles without his explicit consent. 

Charles tilted his head and nuzzled against that hand, resting his head along the curve of Erik’s fingers and palm. “No. But I can keep going.” He turned just enough to kiss the pad of Erik’s thumb. “It helps knowing you’re with me.” 

“Good.” Erik rubbed his thumb against Charles’ cheek before pulling his hand back.

They said nothing else, only parted. Charles did the laundry. He had been dreading the smug self-satisfaction of the couple who had turned him and Angel in, but they were pale and irritable in the morning, complaining of bad dreams.

 

**

 

After breakfast, Charles was allowed to take food to Angel in the medical hut. Hank was livid almost beyond the point of self-control – this only from having seen Angel’s bent wing. “The nerve endings there are more sensitive than fingertips. It’s as though they’d run a razor over her fingers for hours.  How could Elisha allow it?”

“Shhhh.” Charles didn’t mention his own trauma. Though he knew he had no reason to be ashamed, he felt the weight of humiliation nevertheless. Besides, if Hank grew any angrier, he’d snap, and only endanger himself and others. “It’s not long now. We’ll have a chance to make final plans for our departure soon. Just let me see Angel.” 

She lay on her side on the cot, her delicate wing almost comic now that it was so thickly wrapped in gauze. When Charles set the fruit by her bedside, her eyes welled with tears. “Last night,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Then you don’t either. Okay?”

He’d been so blinded by what Elisha had done to him that he’d hardly begun coming to terms with what he and Angel had been forced to do together. Essentially, they had each served as the device for the other’s public rape. Angel had realized before him that their natural impulse would be to blame one another, and that this impulse was one they had to overcome at all costs. Charles took her hand. “You hid everything from him. Elisha suspects nothing about our plans. Angel, you were magnificent.”

“Just wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, that’s all.” But she smiled. Then she squeezed his fingers. “When they took me in there, I was so shaken up I couldn’t think straight. Too scared for myself to even see you. But since then … Charles, Elisha hurt you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. He did.”

And something about that simple admission nearly snapped Charles’ tenuous control. As he struggled to calm himself, Angel leaned closer and stroked his hair. 

“I’m sorry he did that to you,” she said. “I know nothing ever makes it right. But you’ll get past this. I promise you, you will.” 

The worst part was realizing that she spoke from experience. “Now you see how weak I am, compared to you.”   

“You’re not weak because something awful happens to you. Only if you don’t try to get back up again. And you’re up already, aren’t you?”

“More or less.” Charles managed a smile for her. “I hate how we’ve been thrown together, but – I am so very glad to know you, Angel.”

“Same here,” she said, and somehow, despite everything, he could feel the truth of it. The pain they’d been forced to cause one another didn’t matter nearly as much as the friendship being born.

Once again Charles remembered his revelation of the night before – that there was a Utopia within Utopia, a genuine community that existed not at Elisha’s command, but despite his tyranny.

_I’m not going to destroy Utopia_ , Charles thought. _I’m going to save it._

 

**

 

That afternoon, along with various other announcements, the repair committee was posted on the bulletin board. They were to start work the next day – the same day virtually everyone else was scheduled to help clear one of the far fields, which would give them plenty of chances to talk. And Erik had remembered every single name. Charles didn’t dare to so much as look in Erik’s direction, but he sent gratitude ripping through their psychic connection and hoped Erik would feel it.

The reason he didn’t dare look at Erik was because Elisha was watching. He kept his eyes on Charles every time they were brought together throughout the day, until Charles imagined he could feel the heat of that gaze searing his skin. Despite his best efforts, their gazes sometimes met, and every time they did, Elisha smiled with what appeared to be genuine affection. 

It was grotesque to think that last night had not satisfied Elisha’s strange fascination with him – that it had perhaps only whetted it.

_What happens if he summons me again? I won’t be allowed to refuse. But it would hurt even more – and I don’t think I could even pretend not to hate it this time. Oh, God, please, not again._

But Charles tried not to dwell on the possibilities. With any luck they would be out of here within a day or two. And if their escape were planned smoothly enough, surely Erik would see that it was better to come along and help the others build a new mutant community. Better that than a suicidal revenge.

If anyone else knew what Charles had endured, nobody gave any sign, not even the guards who must have heard his cries of pain. Despite the lingering discomfort, Charles walked no more stiffly than anyone else who’d had a sleepless night on one of their flat pallets. Raven came to him after services, but he thought that was for her comfort rather than his own; though he could tell she sensed his disquiet, she didn’t know the cause. It was enough for them to walk together a while, reminiscing about the mansion in Westchester County. How long had it been since he’d thought of that as _home_ , and so fondly? Charles swore he’d never take it for granted again.

That night, at the hut, only Armando betrayed any concern for Charles and Angel; then again, he was the only one of their housemates who would care, regardless. Though he, too, knew better than to mention anything explicit, he made sure to sit and joke with them, to defer any pointed questions from the others and even to help Angel with her nightly work of sweeping up and washing down the windows.  

Charles didn’t fully understand the scars they both shared until lights-out, when he and Angel again lay side by side in their bed. Her wide, frightened eyes met his, a mirror of the fear he felt.

Slowly he removed his underwear, then hers, and rolled on top of her. They made love almost mechanically, sharing nothing through telepathy, hardly even feeling it. But the others could hear the sounds of sex and would know Charles and Angel were doing their duty. They were keeping Elisha at bay – maybe. For a while. Another day.

Even as Charles prepared for his ultimate act of defiance, Elisha Ammon had claimed one small part of his soul.

 

**

 

The “repair committee” met the next day, working hard all the while. 

“I can get a truck,” Alex said as he and Hank hoisted a beam into place. “All of us can load onto it, if we don’t bring anything with us.” 

“I don’t need anything. Just walking out of here is enough.” Raven obviously spoke to everyone, as people nodded and murmured. 

“How soon?” Charles didn’t know how much longer they had before Elisha snapped, but he didn’t want to take too many chances.

“Tomorrow night would be good. I can talk to Azazel about it tonight, say we need it to go pick up some more rafters for repairs here.” Alex ducked his head slightly as Angel maneuvered the nail gun into position; nearby, Armando started marking the location for the next rafter. “Get it gassed up and ready to go tomorrow, and at nighttime we slip out.”

Hank interjected, “We’ll have to think of a distraction. Something that will pull Elisha and his inner circle away from here. The others won’t question what we’re doing or why, but Elisha, Erik, Azazel, Janos … they’ll know something is up.” 

“I’ll get to work on that,” Charles promised.

He had not yet told anyone else of Erik’s cooperation; the unspoken assumption was that Charles had used his telepathy to gain them all places on the same committee, and thus a chance to meet. At this point, they would hardly believe that Elisha’s lover and right hand would turn against him. Only when Erik joined in would they feel trust instead of suspicion. Also Charles knew their plans might yet fail. If they were questioned – tortured – then the fewer people who could be forced to betray Erik, the better.

“After we get away,” Angel said, “then what?”

“I intend to charter a plane back to the United States. To New York City, specifically. Anyone who wants to fly with us can.”

“How big is this plane going to be?” Armando said. Although he was grinning, and people laughed, the question was sincere.

It was Raven who answered. “This is as good a time as any to mention that we’re stinking rich. The plane will be as big as it needs to be. So, stop worrying.”

Angel wasn’t comforted; her disquiet rippled around Charles like a river. “And after New York? What then?” 

Charles had been mulling this over for a while, but now he was sure. “You’re all free to do as you choose, of course. And, as Raven tactfully pointed out, we can afford to help you get wherever it is you want to go. But if you want to stick together, you’re welcome to stay at our home in New York. Yes, Armando, the house is big enough for that.” People chuckled again. “We could see what other ways there are for mutants to live and work as a unified group.”

After a moment’s silence, Alex said, “How do we know it won’t be Utopia all over again?”

Charles didn’t think he suffered from the same kind of megalomania that governed Elisha – but then, he’d never had that kind of power, and never known its temptations. And only now was he realizing that he wasn’t simply spearheading an escape attempt; he was stepping up as another leader, another voice, another vision. What should that vision be? “All I can tell you is that, having lived here, I never want to live anyplace like it again. I can’t see the future; I won’t pretend to know what’s coming. We all have to chart our own paths from now on. I don’t want to choose for you, or anybody else to choose for me. But maybe there’s a way we can work together as equals. Partners.”

“So basically you’re just our landlord,” Armando said, and people chuckled.

“Except it’s rent-free.” Charles meant it as a joke, but several people brightened. They might have given all their money to Elisha, divested themselves of homes and property before they came to live in Utopia. His offer of a home was more than an ideal for many of these people – it was the buffer between them and poverty. “We’ll have to trust each other. Figure out how to live together, whether that means a shared vision for mutant political action or taking turns in the bathrooms.” The mansion had 15 bathrooms, so really that seemed unlikely to be a problem, but Charles meant it mostly as a metaphor. “I don’t have a plan for us – I admit it. But I think nothing I could come up with would be as powerful as what we might build together.”

The hesitation in the group didn’t vanish, but it dwindled yet further. “Sounds like a place to start,” Angel said. “I’m in.” 

“Me too,” Hank agreed, and then others began to chime in as well. Raven smiled at Charles, and he thought finally they had a real beginning.

 

**

 

It felt to Charles as though he could scarcely breathe for the strain, after that – both in the evening as he and Angel had perfunctory sex, the next morning while doing laundry, but above all once he began mingling with the community at large. Every time someone unfamiliar or unfriendly glanced his way, he felt it almost like an electric shock. _Do they know? Have they guessed?_  

Worst of all was when Elisha looked at him with that mixture of lust, greed and affection. And Elisha looked often.

The only bright side was that Charles made a discovery about his telepathy: Adrenalin provided a considerable boost. Extended periods of time with it flowing, that was – he’d never noticed particularly high levels of sensitivity after any brief scare of jolt. But as the day went on, he began picking up more and more people’s emotions, and even scattered thoughts, without even trying.

Which made it worse, in some ways. So many people here were scared and discontent, more even than Charles had imagined. How could he leave them to Elisha?

And yet, how could he fail the people he’d already promised to save? He’d have to hope that the suddenness of their departure, and hopefully Erik’s decision to join them, would provide the shock necessary to wake Elisha up to the fact that Utopia had to change. Yet Charles knew he would be haunted by the shadows of this place long after they’d gotten away.

Then, at the end of the afternoon services, the boom fell. 

Charles felt Raven’s sharp fear and urgency to see him, and he weaved quickly to the crowd by her side. They fell into step beside each other, and her jumbled thoughts flooded in before he had a chance to speak: _Elisha everything ruined what are we Elisha this is bad we’re trapped what do we do Elisha –_

_What’s wrong?_ he thought to her.

Raven jumped. The few times he’d tried to share with her telepathically, she’d disliked it; apparently time hadn’t mellowed her. But necessity overcame her distaste. _Elisha was speaking to a few of us earlier. He said he’s going around tonight, talking to all of the workers. He does it sometimes to lift morale, but that means he’s going to realize we’ve gone too far almost right away. He’ll have people after us before we can possibly get to the airport._

_Shit._ Charles only barely managed to keep from swearing out loud. To Raven he thought only, _We’ll have to distract him._

_How, exactly?_ Raven ran one hand through her red hair in an attempt to calm herself.

He knew the answer almost immediately. Taking Raven’s hand in his own, Charles thought, It’s going to be easier than you think. _Now, listen to me – because this next part you’ll find hard to believe._

 

**

 

That night, just after the others had set out, Charles lingered in the hut, attempting to calm himself. He’d dressed in his least bedraggled clothes, combed his hair. 

_You can do this_ , he told himself. _You can. You must._  

But he’d had no choice before – no matter how much he’d tried to convince himself otherwise. Tonight was his doing, wholly and completely. That didn’t make it easier; it made it harder. His hands shook as he kept patting his hair, as though being neat and tidy would improve matters.

Charles thought once again of why he was doing this – made it more important than what he was doing – and found his strength again.  

As he walked across the grounds, though, the lingering ache in his body reminded him of what he was about to endure. Charles quailed … but didn’t turn back.

_Better lubricant would help. There must be something in Hank’s medical hut. I’ll check and see._

As he fished through the drawers in search of Vaseline or something similar, Charles studied his reflection for a moment in the hut’s single, spotted mirror. He looked pale, not amorous. There was no way Charles could manage amorous; then again, that would be so obviously a lie. Better to try for … thoughtful. Uncertain. Needing reassurance. Yes. He absolutely could look like someone who just needed reassurance. Charles kept examining his face, trying to perfect the right expression, aware that he was on the verge of procrastinating – 

\--and then the tidal wave of fear and anger he felt was matched by Erik’s reflection behind him.

Charles turned just as Erik grabbed his upper arm. “What do you think you’re doing?” Erik whispered. 

“You know what I’m doing,” Charles said. “Why aren’t you with the truck? I told Raven you were on our side – I thought she believed me – ” 

“She believed you. The others would have taken me with them. I didn’t go, because I’m not leaving you here to do this.” 

“You must.”

Erik’s grip tightened, and for a moment Charles thought he might actually be shaken. “And let you sacrifice yourself?”

“I’m not going to die, for God’s sake. I’m going to come after you if I can.” 

“But you’re going to Elisha tonight, even though you know what he’ll do.”

Charles felt a tightness in his gut; it was worse hearing someone say it, though he wasn’t sure why. “Yes.”

“No. I can go to him instead.”

“It’s too late. I told him earlier today that I thought we should talk privately – that I was mixed up and needed his guidance. Which he was egomaniac enough to believe, by the way. It keeps him from visiting all the huts and noticing the others’ escape, and that’s reason enough for me to do it.” 

Erik jerked back, as though he’d felt a cramp or sting. For a moment Charles felt as if he might begin to cry, but then realized that feeling was coming from Erik so strongly that it might as well have been his own. “But why? Charles, why didn’t you ask me to – distract him? I would have, and to me it would have been nothing.”

“Because if you did it, you’d wind up killing him and getting yourself killed in the bargain. And that’s not happening. Not as long as I draw breath.”

“For me? You’re giving yourself to him _for me_?” 

“For everyone. But also for you.” Anger boiled up within Charles, and he tugged away from Erik’s grip. “Goddammit, Erik, you should have gone with them. You should have – trusted me, trusted my judgment.”

“I can’t let you – ”

“You can and you will. If you hurry, you might be able to catch up with them. You’re one of the only people here who could take one of the smaller vehicles without anyone asking questions.”

“Please. You don’t have to do this.”

The tremor in Erik’s voice, and the answering ache of his spirit, buried Charles’ brief burst of temper. Very quietly, he said, “Yes, I do. Even if there were another way out, I’ve already spoken to Elisha. If I’m not there in another half hour, he’ll know something’s up. Then he sends out his guards, and then it’s all over.” Had anyone seen Erik follow him in here? Did anybody know they were together? Charles couldn’t feel any such suspicion through his powers – but at this moment his heart was so full of Erik’s despair and desire and rage that he didn’t think he was even capable of sensing another. “You can’t stop me from doing this. You can only make it worth something.”

For a long moment Erik only stared at him – and then, finally, the façade crumbled. He grimaced, an expression of almost physical pain. “I must reckon with Elisha. That’s absolute. Final. But if you want me to go tonight – to see the others to safety – I’ll honor that.”

A temporary reprieve only, but it was a place to start. Charles exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Okay. That’s good.”

Erik took one step forward, then stopped, unsure. 

_Dear God_ , Charles thought. _All this and we’ve hardly touched. Never kissed._

_I’ll be damned if I go to Elisha Ammon’s bed again without even knowing what it’s like to kiss the man I love._  

So Charles embraced him, arms around Erik’s waist, his head against the broad expanse of Erik’s chest. Strong hands folded around his shoulders, stroked down his back. Charles tilted his face upward – he’d known before now that Erik was taller than he was, but it struck him anew now, the way Erik was able to enclose him. 

He breathed in the warm scent of Erik, nose against Erik’s throat, lips grazing the spot beneath the Adam’s apple. His hands tightened at Erik’s waist – so unexpectedly thin, yet taut, so that his palms felt the planes of muscle, the ridge of bone. Erik was caressing him now, his hands wandering to curl against Charles’ belly or thread through his hair. Both of them were breathing faster; Erik’s heartbeat thumped against Charles as though it would beat down the walls between them. Rip them open. Make them one.

Erik brushed his lips against Charles’ temple – then his cheek – then his lips, too gently for a kiss. He was so aware of what had been done to Charles and what would be done, afraid of making Charles feel even more threatened and alone. Charles wanted to tell him it was all right, but couldn’t find the words.

To hell with words.

Charles kissed him, then took Erik’s face between his hands and kissed him again, even more forcefully. He wanted this – the taste of Erik’s lips, yes, his tongue too, the two of them breathing out and breathing in. The feel of being clutched close, tilted until they were both off balance, their kisses growing even more desperate. The hardness he felt pressing against his abdomen.

He slumped against the nearest wall, dragging Erik with him, then bucked up against Erik so that their cocks pressed together. Erik’s groan was muffled by Charles’ mouth on his.

_I love you_ , Charles thought. _I don’t even know how it’s possible – knowing you in an instant like that, understanding you were the other half of me. But you are. You’re mine. You were never his. Only mine._

“Yes,” Erik groaned, his breath hot on Charles’ ear. “God, yes. Only yours.”

Charles unzipped his pants, then Erik’s; they were both already achingly hard, and slick – slick enough for Charles to get them both in his grasp, though Erik’s sheer girth made it difficult to close his fingers. One stroke, and they both cried out – two strokes, and they fell silent, except for their panting, and the rustle of clothing as they began to move in unison, and the slippery sound of pre-come and flesh against Charles’ palm.

How badly he wanted to _see_ them together – but the darkness in the medical hut revealed only shadows, the faintest hint of movement, black against blue-black. Better to gaze at Erik’s face, painted silver by the one streak of moonlight. He tilted his head back, mouth open, eyes shut, giving in to the moment and to Charles completely. 

And then Charles surrendered too. He let his body shrink to his cock and his hand, so that he felt nothing, knew nothing, but the rhythm and the pressure and Erik’s heat. He let his mind expand, flowing out to surround Erik, shelter him and be rocked by the waves of Erik’s desire and love. Smaller and larger at once, the primal and the infinite – 

Erik came. The warmth spattering thickly on Charles’ hand and belly was blotted out by the exhilaration – Erik’s and Charles’ both, felt as one emotion – and then Charles followed him, grunting onto Erik’s shoulder as everything went white and black and once.

For a few long seconds, they clung to each other, trying to catch their breath; his hand remained cupped around their spent cocks as they softened in the cradle of his fingers. Charles thought he wouldn’t be able to stand alone even if he tried. He didn’t particularly feel like trying. He just wanted to be held by Erik, preferably forever.

But reality intruded. Elisha was waiting. 

“Oh, God,” he said, straightening up. “I have to wash.”

Erik understood why, and he didn’t argue, just went and dampened a washcloth to rub Charles down. This he did briskly and efficiently. No stain would linger on Charles’ clothes; no smell of sex would signal to Elisha how weak his hold on the two of them really was.

All he said was, “How will you get away?”

“After Elisha – afterwards, I’ll go to the gate. I’ll convince Azazel or whomever to give me a vehicle. He won’t realize it wasn’t his own idea until somebody calls him on it, which probably won’t happen until morning.” Charles intended to do everything it took to lull Elisha into exhaustion and hopefully a full night’s sleep. When Erik glanced up at him, even in the dim light his disquiet was obvious. Charles took his hand, then gently tugged away the washcloth and began cleaning Erik in return. “I don’t like warping the mind of another mutant. But – desperate times, desperate measures.”

“You see desperate measures differently than I do,” Erik said.

“And you see desperate times differently than I do. But we’ll never agree, you and I. I don’t care. Do you?” 

“No.” Erik kissed him again. Only then did it occur to Charles that they’d made love in the shadow of his rape – something he’d wondered if he’d ever be able to do again – but it hadn’t held him back at all. Perhaps it was because this was so different, so loving and passionate, that it seemed to bear no resemblance whatsoever to the awkward, painful grappling he’d endured at Elisha’s hands.

That he would endure again soon –

_Don’t think about it._ Quickly Charles said, “I’ll drive out and join you. We’ll fly back to the States in the morning – and you’ll come with us. You have to. If you want to come back later – ” He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, surely. “—then you can. Okay?" 

“We’ll have this conversation again at the airport,” Erik replied. It was ominous, but there was no further time to argue. Charles re-zipped, fastened his belt –

\--and then he saw it. An image from someone else’s mind, but so strong that it seemed to be unfolding in front of Charles’ eyes: Raven, held in the same dark place Angel had been. Except now, Charles could see this place more clearly. It wasn’t a hut; it was a pit dug beneath one, muddy and foul. And his sister – his pregnant sister, who ought to have gotten away with the others, the very one he had come to save – crouched in it, terrified and trapped.

“Raven. They’ve got Raven!” Charles could hardly think. What had gone wrong? Who else was in trouble? “Erik, they’re holding her in that – that pit, or whatever it is – ”

“Shit.” Erik looked like he wanted to punch something, but he remained focused. “I know its location. Let’s go.”

“If they have the others – ”

“They can’t. If Elisha knew the full extent of what was going on, he’d have swooped down on us already.” Erik’s reassurance was logical, but Charles remained unsettled. All he could see was this terrible image of Raven on her knees in the mud.

Erik said, “We’ll get her,” and his resolve was no less than Charles’ own. Charles kissed him once more before they ran out together.

He followed Erik’s lead, out past the perimeter of Utopia – or, at least, the part of Utopia Charles had always known. Beyond the borders, he thought, lay the darker side. Elisha’s secrets.

Still his mind was full of the sight of Raven, her terror driving Charles on past the point of hesitation. Yet as they came upon the hut itself, it suddenly hit him: _Why am I not seeing this through Raven’s eyes_

_Why am I only seeing what her captors see?_

Charles stopped short. “Erik?”

Even as Erik hesitated, looking back at Charles, the attackers waiting for them pounced.

The mutant who leaped in front of Charles was one he didn’t know well, but he knew his power – a paralytic web shot from his fingertips, in which Charles was almost instantly ensnared. As he toppled to his side, he could hear the sounds of Erik fighting – fists against flesh, swearing and grunting – and see Elisha Ammon walking toward them from the woods, face intent.

Charles could only think of one thing to do. “Erik! _Get his bracelet_!”

Instantly the heavy bracelet snapped away from Elisha’s grip into Erik’s palm, only one moment before the paralytic web enveloped him, too. Erik fell down, lying only a few feet away from Charles, equally helpless … and with the bracelet still gripped in one hand.

“It doesn’t matter any longer,” Elisha said as he stepped between them. “None of it matters.”

Elisha’s despair and rage would have overwhelmed Charles at any other moment. But with Elisha’s bracelet removed from his body, everything it had shielded was suddenly revealed – and nothing had prepared him for the horrible truth he now saw.

The truth about Elisha.

And the far more horrible truth that had brought them all here. 


	7. Chapter 7

The paralytic nets that held them also dampened Charles’ power – not so much that he couldn’t feel some of the emotions surrounding them, but enough that he couldn’t convince Elisha and the others to let them go. He could move, but only feebly, and the sticky, numbing web tangled around him, hindering every movement. Next to him, he could hear Erik twisting in the mud, obviously just as constrained.

They had both been dumped in the pit – both probably about to be murdered – and still all Charles could think about was the horror that had been hidden in Elisha’s mind. 

“I knew from the moment you came,” Elisha said. His eyes were focused only on Charles. “I knew this was the hour we would either be saved or damned.” 

“You were spying on us!” Erik shouted. “Admit it!” 

“You were seen together earlier.” Elisha’s voice was distant. “Not that I hadn’t suspected – no. I had _known_ you two would share a connection. But I’d thought I might be able to stop it from being so powerful. So destructive. Such is the price of arrogance. I must face my part in the death of all mutantkind.”

“What are you talking about?” Erik said.

“He’s telling the truth.” Charles felt as though he might be sick. 

A slippery sound from the mud next to him, and Erik had rolled over into Charles’ line of sight. The yellowish web tightened around him with the movement, and Erik winced in pain. “Dammit – what – Charles, what did the damn bracelet do?”

“It helped keep him here, instead of – where he should be. Where he came from.”

Erik looked confused. “What do you mean? Where did he come from?” 

Charles turned his face back up to Elisha, who stood at the edge of the pit, as sorrowful and intent as a preacher at the rim of a grave. The sights he had glimpsed in Elisha’s minds – the possibilities, no, the _certainties_ , the dark and horrible knowledge of everything he had ever been.

He said, “Elisha came from the future.”

The silence that followed lasted only a few moments, and Charles could sense the consternation of their guards … but their determination to obey Elisha remained strong. Erik gaped at him, thunderstruck. The damned webbing kept Charles from seeing everything in Elisha’s mind, but he could sense the man’s absolute belief in his own rightness – no matter where it might lead.

“Almost two centuries in the future,” Elisha said. “From a time where mutants are registered, and contained, and licensed to use their powers only in certain ways at the government’s request. Otherwise we are criminals. Outlaws. They keep us in camps when they can, Erik. Will you hate me for trying to keep our people out of such camps? That’s all I ever wanted to do.”

The images in Elisha’s mind had flooded into Charles for only a moment, but they were so vivid. Utterly real. Mutants with collars clamped around their necks like yokes, dampening their powers. Mechanical intelligence programmed and built to be set upon them at any sign of rebellion. Tattoos not so different from the one on Erik’s skin.

“That’s not possible,” Erik said flatly. 

Elisha’s first response was a sad smile. “Isn’t it? You’re lying in a pit next to a mind reader. A few days ago I healed you from the brink of death. Why do you still question what’s possible?”

“It’s true,” Charles said. He wanted Erik to understand this, horrible though it was, maybe only so he wouldn’t have to bear the knowledge alone. “The bracelet helped … anchor him here, and shielded his thoughts. Not entirely, but enough.” 

Elisha’s bracelet still lay near Erik’s hand, half trapped in the webbing, its golden surface now covered in mud. Rain had begun to patter down again, lightly now, points of coldness against Charles’ arms and face. 

“It’s technology you’d never understand,” Elisha said. “Two hundred years in the future … never mind. It doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say that humanity wasn’t sure whether or not to even use this, and there was no chance they’d entrust something so dangerous to a mere mutant. But when I got my hands on this device, I knew what I had to do. I had to go back to the point where mutants first emerged from humanity, and I had to change everything that led us down this dark road. Above all, that meant stopping the two of you.”

“What are you talking about?” Erik demanded. He writhed within the paralytic net again, then winced as it seemed to tighten around him.

Elisha laughed, a desperate, almost hysterical sound. “All mutant history begins with Professor X and Magneto. Once friends – once lovers – and then implacable enemies. Erik, you were the standout: Starting wars before the humans ever got a chance, striking out in any direction, in every direction, making sure humanity had damned good reason to fear and hate mutants. No tactic was too low for you. Hostages? Robberies? Kidnappings? Murder? All tools you weren’t afraid to use. But Charles, in your own way, you were equally useless. You wanted everyone to get along. Built a nice little school and trained a helpful group called the X-Men – no vanity there, hmm? Noble, valiant mutants sworn to protect and defend all humankind! The trouble was you spent most of your time fighting grudge matches against your ex-lover instead of questioning humanity – and you refused to see the kernel of truth within Erik’s paranoia until it was far, far too late.”

Charles had once dreamed of a school. This was where his dream would have led – to their ruin. He wished he could throw up. 

“That’s what you built for us,” Elisha said. “A constant, useless, internal war of attrition. Mutants versus mutants. With humanity circling us, distrusting us, you both targeted each other. You set us against ourselves. In the history books, it’s portrayed as a clash of ideals, a political division. Meaningful, in its way – you’ve both been dead long enough that even the humans are willing to grant you that much. But I always wondered how much of it was the bitterness of lovers betrayed. I thought … if I went back, any solution would begin with the two of you.”

At least the others were far away by now; whatever else Charles had failed at, tonight or in some future that would never be, he’d gotten Raven, Angel and the others to safety. He clung to it as his only comfort.

“When you first found me – ” Erik’s voice was hoarse. “You knew. About Shaw, about all of it.”

Elisha folded his arms in front of his chest, as though even the memory of meeting Erik could threaten him. “I could have just killed you, you know. Put you in there with Shaw. And I thought about it. But you were so pure. Your anger was so righteous. There was so much good in you, and I thought – I won’t hurt him. I’ll love him. I’ll love him so much that he’ll never need to turn to Charles Xavier. The first time we went to bed together, all I could think was that I was changing the world. Through love, through pleasure, through joy. And that was all real, wasn’t it? For both of us?”

Erik didn’t answer. Charles grasped one strand of the net between two of his fingers, taking its measure.

“It was more difficult than I’d thought, though – uniting mutantkind.” Elisha paced at the edge of the pit, increasingly restless. “I’d underestimated both of you; pulling together such disparate people and giving them common cause … well, it’s complicated. You both had a gift for it, one I didn’t share. Then I hit upon the idea of the Church of the Transformation. It turned out I could preach very well. My destiny finally seemed clear. But the church wasn’t what I hoped it would be. I knew that even before you came, Charles. I was trying to deny it, but I knew.”

No, no, no. If Elisha gave in to despair, now – “There are good people here, Elisha,” Charles said. He sounded breathless; it was hard to inhale deeply with this net around him. “Good people who believe in you. They deserve your faith.”

“But I never deserved theirs,” Elisha said. “The more I try to make them walk the path of salvation, the more they doubt. The more they struggle. And why shouldn’t they? I’m a liar and a fraud, and I could never have done what I hoped here. Utopia was never more than a dream.”

“These people are real. Their lives have meaning. Elisha, think about this.” Charles knew where this was heading; both he and Erik had sensed it before now. If Elisha’s despair settled over all of Utopia – if he chose self-destruction instead of salvation –

“At first I thought we’d do better to exclude you, Charles.” The rain had begun to slick Elisha’s curly hair, rendering his features even more stark in the twilight. “I felt I was filling your role, and better than you ever had. Still, when you came, I thought as long as I could keep you and Erik apart, we had a chance. And you had your own goodness. Your own hope and strength, and I realized I would love you for it – as much as I had ever loved Erik. No wonder mutantkind was torn in two between you.” 

Desperately, Charles said, “Now we both know the truth. Now all three of us can work together. Don’t you see?” 

“It was too late the first time the two of you saw each other,” Elisha said, and now his voice was flat. Resigned. “I knew it even then, but didn’t want to face it. That was when I realized our fates aren’t something we can change. Only what we must – accept.” 

He held out his hand to Azazel; after a moment, Azazel handed Elisha a pistol. The cold ring of metal on metal rang out above the rain as Elisha cocked it.

“Elisha.” Erik’s voice was ragged now. “Elisha, if you ever loved me, stop and think about this.”

“I loved what might have been.” Elisha turned and aimed the pistol directly at Charles. It seemed to Charles that he couldn’t focus on anything but that barrel, black on black in the night, yet unmistakably pointed at his heart. “But you were fated, just as the rest of us were. Fated to love and destroy one another.”

Charles wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to somehow reach out to Erik. More than anything else, he wanted none of this to be true, none of this to be happening. But he was powerless to do anything but lie there in the mud, drenched in rain and the knowledge of his own failure, and wait to die.

Elisha stood there. And stood there. The suspense stretched out, horrible to unendurable to absurd, until Charles was almost at the point of screaming at Elisha to just kill them and get it over with. 

Then Elisha let the gun drop.

“I can’t,” he said, voice breaking. “I can’t do it. I loved you both too much.” 

Erik breathed out sharply, but Charles couldn’t share in his relief. What little he could sense of Elisha’s soul remained as resolved and despairing as it had ever been. This wasn’t over. If anything, it was only getting worse.

To the guards, Elisha said, “Cover the pit. Leave them.”

By this he meant forever.

Even without telepathy, Erik must have realized how dire the situation was. “You know we’ll be found. You won’t be able to explain that away.”

“You’ll never be found. Not until weeks from now, I’d imagine. That’s long enough to – end it.” Only someone deep within his own delusions could think leaving two people to starve to death in a mud pit was kinder than giving them a quick and painless death. It was only his own feelings Elisha wanted to spare.

Charles found his voice. “Don’t do this, Elisha. Whatever you think of me and Erik – if you think we deserve to die here – then we can’t fight you. But the people of Utopia … think of them. They trust you. They deserve a chance.”

“It ends in ruin,” Elisha said. “I can’t save them. I can only let them have one last moment of glory.”

Janos and Azazel were tugging the woven grass cover over the pit, sealing Charles and Erik off from what little bit of light they still had. Although it was foolish to think that they were deprived of air, Charles felt as though a vast, suffocating pressure was clenching around his chest.

The last thing he saw was Elisha, outlined in the crescent-moon shape of the sky left to them. “This way you both have time to think about what I’ve told you,” he said to them. “You have time to realize that this is all your fault. Time to realize that your suicidal attraction to one another is what destroyed us all. Perhaps time enough to learn to hate one another. I think you deserve that.”

Then the grass cover was dragged the rest of the way. They were alone in the dark, left to die. 

For several moments, they were both silent. Charles could no longer sense any emotions from above; he suspected this meant the others were gone. But he also knew he and Erik weren’t waiting for privacy to speak. Neither of them could think of anything to say. 

The first words that came to him were, “Well, shit.”

“It’s all true?” Erik’s voice was very quiet. 

“I think so. It’s what Elisha genuinely believes, at any rate, and he’s not delusional.” Charles managed to roll onto his belly, then on his side again, until he was almost directly next to Erik. Though he couldn’t see, he could sense the warmth of Erik’s presence in the cold, wet darkness. “However, he _is_ suicidal. And he’ll take all of Utopia down with him unless we stop him.” 

“You think he’s doing it now?” Erik caught himself. “Of course he is. That’s why he knows we won’t be found. Elisha intends for everyone in Utopia to be dead by morning. Damn him to hell.”

“My sentiments exactly.” 

“But how are we supposed to get out of these nets? We don’t have our powers, or any metal I could use even if we did. There’s the bracelet, but it’s not much –” 

“Stop thinking like a mutant and think like a human for once.” Charles’ fingers found the edge of Erik’s net. “We just have to work hard, and work together. Come on.” 

The trick, as they both learned over the next hour of silent effort, was for one of them to pull away a small section of the net and allow the other to slide his arm slightly more free of it. This was painstaking labor – they rarely made more than a few centimeters’ progress on any one grab, and although they were only using their hands, their fingers began to cramp painfully only a few minutes after they’d begun. Still they kept at it, wriggling back to back in the mud, never speaking except to say _okay_ or _that’s it_ , trying hard not to think about what was happening in Utopia, or anything else Elisha had said, just the ties that bound them. 

Finally, with one last tug, Erik got the net over Charles’ shoulder, and Charles was able to pull himself entirely out of it, peeling the sticky, numbing stuff away. As soon as he was free, he began tearing away Erik’s net with both hands. Within moments they were both rid of the stuff. Charles exhaled in relief as he felt his powers returning to him …

… though that meant also feeling the depth of Erik’s confusion and misery.

As Charles watched, Erik put out his hand to levitate the bracelet upward. Deliberately he shaped it, melted it – destroying that technology before it could wreak any more havoc – and refashioned it into a sharp-bladed knife, which he slipped into the side of his belt. Charles knew what that meant to Erik, what he was willing to do to Elisha with it. All he said, however, was, “If you get on my shoulders, you should be able to push the cover back. We can climb out from there.”

“All right.” Charles braced his hands against Erik’s shoulders, and Erik gripped his wrists. Even that small touch was too close to a caress. They both hesitated for one moment, uncertain.

“What Elisha said about us was true?” Erik said.

“I – I think so.”

How was it possible that the love he felt for Erik could be so corrupted? That they could twist each other up so terribly? And yet Charles already knew that he was vulnerable to Erik in ways he’d never been with anyone else. There was no overestimating what they might be to each other – or what they could do to each other.

But there were no quick answers for them, and right now, everyone in Utopia was in mortal danger. If they’d once forgotten to put the world’s concerns ahead of their own – well, they wouldn’t forget again.

“Later.” Equally resolved, Erik steadied himself. Charles climbed up and got to work.

Crawling out of the pit, even uncovered, took a while, but finally they were out. The rain was fierce now, pounding down, but they ran side by side through the mud, sometimes slipping but never falling. Charles swept outward with his powers, reaching with more and more of his strength, hoping to feel the spirits of those at Utopia. _Please, let them be alive. He can’t have talked them all into suicide that quickly. Elisha’s hold over them is powerful, but not even he could do that._

Could he?

“How would he do it?” Charles shouted as they ran. He was out of breath, but kept going. “What would Elisha make them do?”

“Poison,” Erik said. “There are insecticides for the crops. Put some in their water or their food, and that’s the end.”

Charles swore under his breath and tried to run even faster.

Then, as they rounded one small upward slope, they finally saw the lights of Utopia – and Charles was hit with a wave of psychic despair so vast, so limitless, that he cried out in pain.

Erik turned to him in alarm, and Charles choked out, “It’s begun.”

 

**

 

The last time Charles had been here, everyone had been singing hymns, clapping and dancing, mutants united.

Now it was a scene out of Hieronymous Bosch: the torment of the innocents.

Hundreds of mutants – perhaps the entire population of Utopia, minus those who had escaped earlier – were crumpled together on the dirt floor, a twisted mass of arms and legs and wings. Nobody remained strong enough to stand. People writhed where they lay, most of them crying, a few of them praying. Elisha had excluded no one, not the elderly, not the children. 

Not himself. 

Elisha sat in the wicker chair that Charles had previously thought of as his throne, on the dais slightly above the crowd. He was clearly in pain, only semi-conscious, but he continued to sit there … punishing himself, Charles realized, by watching his people die at his hand.

_That’s how deeply he believes we’re doomed_ , Charles thought. _He honestly sees this as merciful, compared to what might come._

“We’re too late,” Erik said. His hand went to the knife at his belt, as if there were still anyone left to fight. 

“Maybe not.”

Charles made his way through the gruesome scene as fast as he could, until he managed to leap onto the dais at Elisha’s side. He put his hands on either side of Elisha’s face. Elisha blinked slowly, dully, hardly able to focus on Charles. His skin had gone clammy and cold. There was nothing left of the rapist any longer, or the messiah. He was almost a child. Most of the Prophet was already gone … but hopefully enough remained.

“Am I dreaming?” Elisha whispered. 

“Yes,” Charles forced himself to smile. This would be easier if Elisha didn’t fight. “Dream with me.”

And then he slipped his mind within Elisha’s.

There he found confusion. Chaos. Elisha’s thoughts were profoundly disordered, almost as jumbled as Erik’s had been when he’d been near death days before. The pain was different, though – instead of the cruel fire of injury, he was racked by a slow, cold, sinking that was hollowing him from the inside out.

Charles attempted to focus, but his mind could only go where Elisha’s went. Now, Elisha was thinking about him.

He saw his mother’s death. That of his college roommate – of the first man he’d ever loved. All those countless tragedies that had haunted Charles’ life, forever interfering with the development of his telepathy – none of them were accidents. _None of them._ Charles sucked in a breath, almost shocked out of his concentration by the sheer pain of it.

Worse, though, were the images that floated up next: Old film and pictures of Professor Charles Xavier, leader of the X-Men. He saw himself middle aged, then elderly, forever calling for an acceptance for mutants that never came, hope wearing thinner and thinner as the years went on. He saw himself in a wheelchair ( _fragile_ , Elisha had called him), forced to send his beloved students out to fight the battles he could not. He saw himself forever at war with a mysterious figure in a dark helmet who was almost unrecognizable as Erik …

… and if it had been hard to see what became of him in the future Elisha had known, it was so much harder to see Erik, twisted by hate and fear, his good heart locked deep inside.

Charles reached in deeper, deeper still, searching for one memory in particular. He focused on Erik and found it: The sight of Erik lying there in the mud, head partly crushed by the falling beams, Charles himself by his side.

_Give me this,_ Charles thought to Elisha. _Give me this moment. Live it again with me._

_You see now, Charles. You see what you’ll become, the mistakes you’ll make._  

Charles shook his head. He could hardly see Elisha now, between the thick fog of Elisha’s memories and the tears in his own eyes. _No. Only one set of possibilities. There are thousands more, millions more, and we deserve the chance to fight for them._

Elisha didn’t believe, but he no longer had the strength to hold back. His mind slipped open further, taking Charles into the moment when he had chosen to save Erik’s life.

The moment when Elisha had healed Erik with his mutation.

Charles wrapped himself in that moment, felt what it was like for Elisha to do that – the warm, golden, glowing heat of it, the vibration that connected him to the person who needed healing. And he willed Elisha to feel it again, to send that healing out in every direction at once.

This wasn’t healing one person. This was healing hundreds. If bringing Erik alone back from the brink had been enough to shatter Elisha, what would this do?

But Charles kept on. Elisha had made his choice. What he couldn’t be allowed to do was choose for everyone else in Utopia … or for the entire future of mutantkind.

The glow seemed to suffuse Charles’ whole body, or was it Elisha’s? He couldn’t tell the difference any longer. But it snaked out in dozens of directions at once, fusing everyone together, lifting up their suffering and turning it into something else completely. It was as though he could feel the purification of their blood, the regeneration of their cells, the sudden joy of pain’s absence, multiplying stronger and stronger every single second.

Elisha gasped; Charles gasped with him. A band seemed to be tightening around his heart, lashing through his left arm, strangling him –

“Charles!” Erik tugged him back into his arms, and the bond was shattered. Charles struggled against him for a moment, but stopped as he realized that the work was done. No one still cried out in pain. Everyone was sitting up, checking one another, murmuring in confusion and sorrow, but they were alive. 

All but one.

Elisha still sat in his throne of straw. His head lolled to one side; his eyes remained open, horribly empty. With a shaking hand, Erik reached out and closed Elisha’s eyelids.

“It was too much,” Charles whispered. “Healing that many people at the same time. He couldn’t handle it.”

Erik nodded. “You did what you had to do.”

“I’ve killed a man.”

“No. You’ve saved hundreds. And I think –” Erik’s voice broke. “By saving them, you saved whatever was good in Elisha. Maybe he would never have seen that. But I do.”

Charles leaned his head wearily against Erik’s shoulder and tried to believe it too.

 

**

 

The night that followed was long and horrible. People were upset to the point of hysteria. Very few had actually known they were consuming poison until after it was done, and so the sense of betrayal was overwhelming. Yet even that was not enough to fully eclipse the grief people felt for Elisha, and for the dream of Utopia, which was clearly dead. Nobody knew where to go or what to do, and the aftermath of a near-death experience was bad enough on its own without the utter confusion about what the future held.

Through all this, Charles and Erik did their best. They nursed those who were still shaken, gathered groups together, urged people to talk. Charles had never felt less of a need to be in charge, and noticed that Erik, too, resisted any effort to follow in Elisha’s footsteps as their leader. But people kept turning to them all the same. 

_Elisha said we had a gift for bringing people together. Maybe we do._

But what were they to do with that gift?

By dawn, everyone was ready to leave – or, if not ready, at least eager. Even those most devoted to Elisha didn’t want to remain without him. A small party wrapped his body in a bedsheet and went out to conduct a makeshift funeral, which Charles thought it would be unwise to attend. Everyone else began loading up the vehicles, climbing into the backs of the trucks with their few possessions strapped onto their backs. Those who could fly or carry heavier weight were volunteering to take on more of the load. The beautiful jungle haven Charles had first seen now looked desolate and deserted – something about to sink back into the mud from which it had come.

Erik came to his side, and they stood there together, surveying the scene. It was the first time they had been alone together since Elisha’s death.

“We might reach the airport before the others have left,” Charles began. “Even Raven would have been hard-pressed to charter a flight earlier than this.”

“It would be good to all go together. Is everyone coming to your home?”

“This is too many for even the mansion, but I suspect most people will want to go back to the lives they had before. The rest – yes, if they want to come, they’re welcome.”

After a moment of silence, Erik said, “So you’re beginning again.”

By this, Charles understood, he meant beginning down the path Elisha had seen. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Erik nodded slowly. “It seems to me there are two clear options before us.”

“… all right.”

“One is for us to allow everyone to disperse. To never see any of the rest – or each other – ever again.” The way Erik said it, Charles knew he found that option as painful as Charles did himself. “We would make no efforts to bring mutantkind together, in any form. Others will try, in time. They might manage better than we did.”

“Possibly.”

“Or they might make the exact same mistakes, because they haven’t been warned, as we have.”

“Probably.” Charles sighed heavily. Mud had dried all over his clothes, and Erik’s too; he wondered if his face, like Erik’s, was dirty and pale with exhaustion. It felt like it.

Erik’s eyes met Charles’. “Then there’s the other option.”

“I’d like to hear it.” 

“We begin. We bring everyone together. We do our best to lead them, knowing what we know, heeding what Elisha knew.” Erik hesitated for one moment. “And we agree never to part ways. You and I, together, always. No matter how much we disagree, we find the middle path, every time.”

Charles’ heart had begun beating very fast. “Easier said than done.” 

“I know. I don’t like to compromise.” But Erik nodded, as if saying yes to his own question. “But Elisha showed us what happens if we oppose one another. We have to find another way. I’d like to think the path ahead is one we could travel side by side.” 

“So would I.” 

“Is that a yes?”

He wasn’t agreeing only to guide mutantkind together with Erik; he was agreeing to bind himself to Erik for the rest of their lives. As leaders and as lovers. This promise was one he had to make with only a few weeks’ knowledge of Erik, only a few heated moments of lovemaking, and only shadows stolen from a dying man’s mind to show the pitfalls ahead. It was terrifying. It could still all go so horribly wrong. 

But Charles somehow found the strength to smile. “Yes.”

 


End file.
